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Research

Research

Research

Summary

Understanding the sensitivity of food systems to global change is limited by high uncertainties associated with the cross-scale interactions between the natural environment and the cultural landscape. Defining what might be within a suite of plausible futures requires a baseline scenario that captures the factors that are most significant in shaping decisions at different levels of governance, and which highlights the current, changing and interacting sensitivities of the system to stressors associated with both climate change and economic and cultural globalization.This project will create such a baseline by assessing the drivers and evolving social outcomes of one of the world's most important food systems: the Mexican maize system. Building on prior research that anticipates climate change will have negative impacts for Mexican maize production, and the globalization of agricultural markets is further challenging the future of maize in Mexico, an interdisciplinary team of social and biophysical scientists will investigate Mexican agricultural vulnerability in terms of a complex food system, in which individual decisions to plant or not to plant maize are hypothesized to manifest as landscape scale transformations. The research team also expects that global to regional price signals and climatic variability will affect local food production and land use outcomes differently across the Mexican landscape, as a function of regionally-specific cultural, economic, demographic, ecological and political factors. The project involves: a) a description of the changing national geography of maize production and the associated socioeconomic, institutional, and demographic correlates; b) an analysis of climate trends and variability as related to maize production, yields and water availability for irrigated farming; c) an econometric analysis of the spatial patterns of maize price volatility in three maize-producing states in order to evaluate the contribution of maize price volatility to farm-level risk and d) an evaluation of the drivers (e.g., prices and climate) and outcomes (land use, perceptions of food quality, and household maize expenditures) of maize abandonment / persistence at the farm-level through case studies in the states of Sinaloa, Mexico and Chiapas. A combination of approaches will be used, including exploratory spatial data analysis (ESDA), econometrics analysis (spatial, time-series, and spatial panels), agro-climatic analyses, and household livelihood surveys.

This interdisciplinary and multi-method project involves experts in economic geography, econometrics, spatial analysis, livelihood assessment, climatology, agroecology and public policy in Mexico and the United States. It will provide the foundation for subsequent research on the development of scenarios of future social-ecological change and vulnerability of food security in Mexico. The project consolidates a strong international collaborative research community, involving Arizona State University, University of California Santa Barbara, the Colegio de Mexico (Mexico City), the Colegio de la Frontera Sur (Chiapas), and the National Institute of Forestry, Agriculture and Livestock Research (INIFAP, Mexico City). The project aims to enhance this network throughout the project's implementation, by inviting Mexican experts external to the project to participate in part of the annual project coordination meetings to share their research and insights. Graduate students from the U.S. institutions will collaborate with research counterparts in Mexico. The approaches and findings from the project will be used as case material for graduate and undergraduate courses in earth system science, regional analysis, development economics and sustainable food systems. The diagnostic and analytical results of this project will be disseminated through a variety of forums to maize policy experts of the national agricultural secretary (SAGARPA), state agriculture ministries in Sinaloa, State of Mexico and Chiapas, non-governmental organizations interested in land use change and maize diversity, and to the academic communities in Mexico and the U.S. The project's results will also be disseminated to Mexican authorities responsible for climate change initiatives nationally in order to contribute to the efforts of these agencies to comply with international climate change agendas.

Personnel

Funding

National Science Foundation Subcontract with University of California-Santa Barbara

Timeline

October 2008 — February 2012