The concept of family farming and its implications for public policy in Mexico

Abstract

The structural adjustments that gave way to neoliberal globalization in Latin America starting in the 1980s caused transformations in rural areas while continuing to exclude subsistence agriculture from development priorities. Nowadays, this form of production is related to Family Farming (FF), according to the current concept of FAO. It is argued that this definition is a reference for the design and implementation of public policies at the international level. The purpose of this article was to reflect on the implications of the FF concept for public policies in Mexico. A bibliographic analysis of FAO institutional documents and others related to the subject was carried out. The results show that, although the FF concept is flexible and multidimensional, it acquires a normative character by conditioning the prevalence of family labor in the running of productive units. It is concluded that although the normative vision of FF has favored the exclusion of non-business rural economic units in the country in question, this depends, to a large extent, on the political stance of the government in office.