Food sovereignty refers to a country’s ability to produce its own food in a sufficient and sustainable manner, while maintaining control over its agricultural system and patterns of consumption.

In Mexico, despite its great agricultural diversity, agri-food sovereignty has faced significant challenges due to a combination of factors, including:

• Agricultural policies historically focused on trade liberalization and exports (USMCA/T-MEC and NAFTA/TLCAN), rather than prioritizing self-sufficiency and local production for human consumption.
• The impact of the Green Revolution in the United States, which, through large investments in highly mechanized crops dependent on fertilizers and heavy subsidies, drove prices down. As a result, Mexico’s imports of basic grains—mainly for animal feed, human consumption, and some industrial inputs—increased considerably.
• The predominance of small Mexican producers with limited access to technology, financing, and markets, which reduces their competitiveness vis-à-vis large agro-exporters and makes them more vulnerable to climate variability, groundwater availability, and price volatility.
• Weak rural infrastructure, including irrigation, storage, and transportation systems.
• The transformation of the national diet, with increased consumption of ultra-processed foods that depend on imported cereals and other foreign inputs.
• Rural outmigration, driven by the search for opportunities outside the countryside, weakens local productive capacity and accelerates dependence on food from abroad.

This dynamic has perpetuated a structural contrast in the Mexican countryside. On the one hand, the country is internationally recognized for its productive diversity and its role as the world’s third-largest exporter of fruit, second-largest exporter of vegetables, and leading exporter of beer. On the other hand, Mexico depends on imports of cereals such as yellow corn, wheat, and soybeans to cover a significant share of its basic food needs, as these crops are produced more cheaply in countries such as the United States since the Green Revolution.

While Mexico’s trade policy has leveraged the country’s comparative advantages to boost profitability and competitiveness in certain agro-export sectors, it has also generated deep rural inequality. Profits are concentrated in regions with infrastructure, technology, and access to financing, while millions of small producers remain marginalized, with low incomes and limited opportunities to integrate into markets. As a result, export specialization—although economically beneficial—has contributed to structural vulnerability that undermines food sovereignty and territorial equity in Mexico. Importing a share of cereals (especially feed grains) is reasonable as long as international prices remain stable and there are no supply risks. However, when more than 40% of the corn or wheat consumed comes from abroad, the country loses its ability to respond to food or geopolitical crises.

Agro-exporters have access to information on products in high demand in international markets, purchase contracts, financing, economies of scale, vertical integration, as well as crop varieties and resilient technologies. In contrast, small producers earn low returns from growing family-oriented crops that are typically low value and undifferentiated; they sell to intermediaries who capture most of the profits, lack access to financing, and face high vulnerability to weather events, pests, diseases, price volatility, abusive intermediaries, rising input costs, limited access to water, suitable varieties and technologies, and cultural loss as traditional foods are replaced by ultra-processed products that in turn generate high public health costs.

Although often presented as opposing models, agricultural export orientation and agri-food sovereignty can be complementary if articulated through a balanced strategy. Exports generate foreign exchange, attract investment, drive technological innovation, and position Mexico as an agri-food power in high-value products such as fruits, vegetables, and specialized agro-industry. Agri-food sovereignty, on the other hand, seeks to ensure that the country produces enough essential foods in a sustainable manner, reducing dependence on imports of basic grains and protecting domestic food security.

Therefore, it is essential to integrate both systems (moving away from monocropping), rather than continuing to substitute one for the other. There must be balanced interdependence in which countries can import or export differentiated, high-income products while guaranteeing the production of essential foods. In this sense, it is reasonable to be subject to global market conditions for the former, but not for the latter.

Mexico does not need to produce everything it consumes, but it does need to guarantee the production of what is essential to reduce vulnerability to external factors. Committing to strategic food sovereignty means ensuring national supply of basic grains and other foods fundamental to the Mexican diet—such as white corn, beans, rice, and bread wheat—while maintaining competitiveness in export crops.

It is also important to note that each region should define its own model of self-sufficiency and export based on climatic and cultural diversity, to rebuild the social and economic fabric of the Mexican countryside. Regions must have access to resources such as financing, water, agricultural inputs, machinery, technology, productive knowledge, and skilled labor. Current dependence on subsidies is not a natural consequence of producing cereals, but rather the result of producing them inefficiently and of small producers operating in value chains where they capture the smallest share of value. The challenge lies in changing the producer’s relationship with the market. Protectionism through subsidies, when used as the sole support tool for small producers, functions as a mechanism of social containment rather than a long-term productive development strategy.

Fragmented governance and institutional arrangements constitute one of the main structural obstacles to advancing effective agri-food sovereignty. In Mexico, public policies related to the countryside often operate in a fragmented manner, with isolated programs, poorly aligned objectives, and short-term horizons driven more by political cycles than by an integrated development strategy. The lack of coordination among agriculture, water management, public health, and trade creates contradictions: water-intensive crops are incentivized in water-stressed regions; exports are promoted without considering nutritional or territorial impacts; and health consequences are addressed without tackling the underlying food and production causes. This institutional disconnect weakens the State’s capacity to plan by watershed and region, articulate inclusive value chains, and anticipate climate, supply, or food security risks. Without coherent governance that integrates production, natural resources, nutrition, and markets, agri-food policy becomes reactive, inefficient, and costly, perpetuating system vulnerability and the exclusion of small producers.

The real question is not whether there is a market for small producers, but whether the State, development banking, and the agri-food system are willing to build the conditions that allow small producers to participate with dignity, profitability, and economic power.

In this way, the country can balance its commercial advantages with its social responsibility, strengthening local productive chains, protecting rural incomes, and ensuring that food supply does not depend entirely on international prices or the political and agricultural decisions of other nations. In short, the key is not to close borders or stop producing the most profitable export foods, but to integrate that system with the production of basic foods in order to regain control over what is essential to guarantee sufficient, accessible, and sustainable food for the entire Mexican population—through coordinated public policies commensurate with the scale of the challenge.

Finally, agri-food sovereignty today faces challenges that go beyond agricultural production and international trade. Access to, management of, and regeneration of water have become central issues, as aquifer overexploitation, inefficient allocation of concessions, and the lack of watershed-based governance limit the country’s productive capacity. Added to this are the effects of climate change, which intensify droughts, extreme events, and yield volatility, increasing vulnerability associated with external dependence.