Introduction

Currently, more than 4.75 billion people in the world, almost half of its population, suffer from moderate to extreme poverty.¹ One out of every nine inhabitants of the planet suffer from chronic hunger and millions of people die from this cause (^{FAO, 2015}). Concerning Latin America, ECLAC (2012) points out that there are 167 million people living in poverty, which is equivalent to 28.8 % of the total population, of which 66 million are in extreme poverty. To counteract hunger and food insecurity, which are the main expressions of poverty, there has been a broad normative framework at both the international and national levels for more than five decades.

In Mexico, despite the implementation of a wide variety of public policies, poverty and food insecurity have been a recurrent problem throughout history, with a greater incidence in the rural sector. The question then arises: Why do poverty and food insecurity persist in rural Mexico? Therefore, the objective of this study was to analyze the persistence of poverty and food insecurity in rural Mexico. In this sense, based on the interdependence between the different levels of space or degree, be they global, national, regional or local, the methodology used consisted of a review of documents with a historical-structural approach² in which it is very important to know the origin of the processes and with that, to start from a causal analysis that allows a critical vision of what is analyzed, in this case, food poverty in Mexico, in relation to structural issues in their historical context from which the conjunctural factors are derived, which permit it to proliferate. The historical-structural approach highlights the importance of the historical context to understand how society operates, likewise, the relevance of economic and social structures and systems with their hierarchies and differentiated functions, and national structures that reflect the transformations of the international structures of the hierarchical and unequal world system of which they are part (^{Sánchez, 1991}, ^{Cardozo, 1972}).

This document is divided into four sections: the first section deals with the conceptual development of food security; the second section analyzes the persistence of poverty and food insecurity in Mexico and demonstrates how the influence of the international context largely explains the dynamics of this problem. In the third section, a synthesis is made of the evolution of food policies in Mexico, characterized by reflecting the international pattern of the food security approach, and the changes in the economic development model linked to international development. In the fourth section, poverty and food insecurity are analyzed as structural problems of economic development, all in the context of the global food crisis, unprecedented in the history of humanity. Finally, a sharing of knowledge between the discourses, concepts, approaches and practices of food security and sovereignty to contribute to the generation of applied knowledge with structural changes aimed at guaranteeing the democratic control of the agro-food system and thereby overcoming poverty and food insecurity under a rights-based approach is proposed.

Conceptual development of food security

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), approved by the General Assembly of the United Nations (UN), recognized the right to food as a human right (Article 25). However, the problem of hunger continues to exist, and in many regions has even worsened; the FAO indicated that in 2015 there were 795 million people in the world suffering from chronic hunger and that about 6 million children die each year of malnourishment.³ Although it is true that, since its founding in 1945, the food issue has been a central axis for the FAO, it began to have real significance at the beginning of the 70s, in the face of worldwide concern about the scarce availability of basic foods and the increase in their prices, which caused famines in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Thus, during the World Food Conference (WFC) in 1974, the concept of Food Security was defined, focusing on the global and national scales. It was aimed at improving the availability of staple foods to face hunger, which, far from being solved, became more acute (^{Salcedo, 2005}; ^{Cárcamo and Álvarez, 2014}).

In 1981, Amartya Sen contributed significantly to the evolution of the thinking about food security, specifically regarding the causes of hunger, as he questions the explanatory approach of hunger.⁴ In this sense, Sen, through the theory of entitlement to food,⁵ shows that the causes of famine and hunger do not correspond to natural factors (meteorological and demographic). On the contrary, he considers them derived from the socioeconomic system, in particular poverty and inequality. As a result, a second contribution of this theory consisted in not taking the population as a uniform whole, but rather considering the difficulties that each family presents for access to food. In this way, by identifying the interrelationships between hunger and poverty, the concept of Family Food Security (FFS) emerges, with a double reorientation: it takes the family as a scale of analysis and now focuses on the access to food.⁶ In 1986, the World Bank’s report on poverty and hunger incorporated the temporal dynamics of food insecurity. Since the 90s, food security has become more important. In 1996, during the WFC, the Rome Declaration on World Food Security was signed by 186 of the 193 member states of the UN, which states that “Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences in order to lead an active and healthy life “(^{FAO, 1996: 1}). This last concept is the one with the greatest institutional acceptance to date.⁷ At a parallel meeting to the WFC’s of 1996, the movement Vía Campesina⁸ launched the concept of food sovereignty, which states that: “it is the right of each nation to maintain and develop its own capacity to produce the basic foods of the peoples, while respecting their own productive and cultural diversity;” thus, the concept has evolved to include interests of other collectives (^{Rosset, 2004}).⁹ Although the concepts of sovereignty and food security coincide,¹⁰ they are generally analyzed in a divergent manner, which constitutes a political and academic debate of worldwide relevance.¹¹

Theories concerning the causes of the global incidence of chronic hunger and associated situations have generated some evident paradigm shifts in the conceptual evolution of food security. Among these, the transition from a global and nationwide level to a family and individual level is notable, as well as from an initial focus centered on food availability to a broader vision that has incorporated other dimensions such as access, biological utilization, stability, institutionalism, and safety, among others (^{Baca and Lemos, 2017}). Thus, and given the fact that hunger and undernourishment have worsened globally, the concept of food security has acquired great importance and complexity¹², in such a way that over time a wide range of diverse meanings have resulted.¹³ Numerous instruments and kinds of policies have dealt with food security. Nevertheless, instead of guaranteeing the right to food, hunger and food insecurity not only persist, but also have become acute in many countries.

Therefore, the low efficiency of public policies and the increase in food dependence and vulnerability generated by a new global agro-food order in the frame of the current economic development model require conceptual reassessments of food security (^{Salcedo, 2005}; ^{Cárcamo and Álvarez, 2014}).

In this regard, ^{Torres (2016)} has identified important conceptual limits, pointing out that […] proposed solutions to food insecurity are limited; their seasonality, stages, and attention scales are incongruous for the treatment of a problem which emanated from the asymmetries of economic development” (^{Torres, 2016:16}).¹⁴ Moreover, he emphasizes that […] the structural factors that lead to a limit situation of food security which can affect, along with other critical aspects of development, the national security of a country have not even been analyzed” (^{Torres, 2016:18}). Therefore, basing the solution on the problem of access to food in the free market leads to inequality, marginalization, poverty and even serious conflicts at the national level. According to ^{Torres (2016)}, food insecurity is “a structural problem from asymmetrical development.” Moreover, the problems of availability and access to food exist also due to internal, regional and territorial causes (structural asymmetries) and other problems related to national regulatory asymmetries (asymmetries in public policy).¹⁵

Persistence of food poverty in rural mexico

In Mexico, high poverty and food insecurity indices constitute a persistent issue. According to data from the National Council for Evaluation of Social Development Policy (^{CONEVAL, 2015}), 46.2 % of the total population of Mexico is in a state of poverty, which is equivalent to 55.3 million people, of which 11.4 million are in extreme poverty.¹⁶ Regarding the dimension of food poverty, CONEVAL (in the same study) reported that 23.4 % of the total population, equaling 28 million people, have deficient access to food. It should be taken into account that food poverty is the cruelest of poverties, which infringes on the Right to Food (specified in Article 4 of Mexico’s constitution). According to the National Household Income and Expense Survey of 2008, food poverty affected 18.2 % of the population against 13.4 % recorded in 2006 (^{INEGI, 2009}). About that, ^{Torres (2010)} notes that the analysis of the period between 1992 and 2008 shows disappointing behavior in food poverty trends, as it declined by barely 2.1 % nationally. The progress achieved between 2000 and 2004 in reducing food poverty was reversed between 2006 and 2008. Food poverty in Mexico has increased in recent years, as corroborated by CONEVAL in 2015 (Figure 1).

Source: ^{CONEVAL (2015)}.

Figure 1 . Evolution of the population in food poverty, Mexico, 1992-2014 (percentage of people).  

Figure 1 shows the evolution of food poverty and its persistence nationwide. According to ^{CONEVAL (2015)}, the following findings are highlighted: 1) between 1994 and 1996 the highest increase in national food poverty was recorded, rising from 21.2 % to 37.4 %. This period coincides with a real decrease in GDP of 6.6 % and an increase of 4.8 % in international food prices, 2) in 2006, the lowest historical level in the incidence of food poverty was recorded, falling to 13.8 % nationwide. Continuous GDP growth occurred during the five previous years and although food prices began to rise, they still did not do so at an accelerated rate; 3) between 2006 and 2008, national food poverty increased by 4.6 %, which coincided with a 3.7 % reduction in GDP growth during the same timeframe and a 58.7 % increase in international food prices and 4) from 2008 to date, food poverty nationwide continues to increase, along with a sustained rise in international food prices.

It is clear that the increase in food prices at the international level has been reflected in Mexico, causing a significant increase in the cost of the basic food basket, which, added to the low income levels,¹⁷ makes access to it economically difficult for millions of Mexicans. In this context, another factor to take into account is that food poverty differs in urban and rural areas.¹⁸ Various studies show that food poverty presents its highest incidence¹⁹ in rural areas. The empirical evidence shown in the annual reports of CONEVAL attests to the fact that the problem of food poverty has been persistent in recent years.

Evolution of public food policies in mexico

As defined by Lassweel (1992), public policies are strategies aimed at resolving public problems. Food poverty, as has been demonstrated, is a problem that persists in the rural and urban population of Mexico. A Delphi study undertaken in 2013 by rural development researchers in Mexico points out that “rural poverty is being neglected by public policies, as various international organizations have indicated in their reports” (^{Martínez-Carrasco et al., 2014 p. 31}).

Thus, in Mexico, public policies, whose aim is to resolve this problem, have been focused on social protection policies (operated by the Secretariat of Social development - SEDESOL-) or productive development policies (through the Secretariat of Agriculture, Livestock, Rural Development, Fisheries and Food -SAGARPA-). ^{Meny and Thoenig (1992)}, meanwhile, define public policy as “a government action program in a sector of society or in a geographical area.” The evolution of food production related policies (in this writing called food policies) in Mexico, mainly since the 70s, have been characterized by reflecting the international pattern of the approach to food security led to a large extent by FAO, changing decade after decade (motivated by different theories about the causes of hunger and conjunctural situations of international incidence).

In this context, Mexico acquired commitments aimed at eradicating poverty and reducing food insecurity, resulting in the definition of public policies. Furthermore, the evolution of food policies is directly influenced by structural and cyclical changes in the framework of Mexico’s economic development model (^{Torres, 2016}).²⁰ A description of public policies follows.

In the 70s, the National System for the Ejidal Business Support Program (PACE) and the Integrated Family Development (DIF) program were created to educate the population in eating habits, distribute dietary supplements, expand the commercial network, subsidize production, and improve the nutritional status of the population, prioritizing the population of children and pregnant mothers. Its strategies and actions are highlighted by: delivery of school breakfasts, production of milk for infants and pregnant women, creation of community kitchens, distribution of seeds and vegetables, credit for agricultural pro duction, subsidies for food production, and price regulation of consumer goods (^{Barquera et al, 2001}).

In 1980, the State created the Mexican Food System (SAM) in order to stimulate the production of food staples; achieve food self-sufficiency and improve its distribution; provide technical assistance, training and technology transfer, access to loans and subsidies, and investment in infrastructure; improve market prices and develop a food distribution and supply system. It was characterized by multi-sectoral participation, which created difficulties among the structures involved. In spite of its innovative design, where a systemic view was used for the first time with regards to food supply, three years later the program was terminated, due to, among other reasons, the severe fiscal crisis.

Subsequently, food policies were oriented in a very different way, abandoning the self-sufficiency approach. In 1982, in the face of the economic crisis, the State significantly reduced the subsidies related to food consumption and production, and the National Food Program (Pronal) was created, prioritizing the population with a high marginalization index and increasing the minimum wage in relation to the basic food basket.

With the devaluation of the peso and the increase in food prices in 1987, various programs were restructured; the Na tional Solidarity Program (Pronasol) was launched, which also prioritized the population with high marginalization rates. In this manner, during the 70s and 80s, food policy in Mexico showed a clear assistance-oriented trend, where the State went from a food policy oriented towards self-sufficiency, to a food policy oriented to cover the national food supply to a large extent through its purchase in the international market (^{Barquera et al, 2001}; ^{López & Gallardo, 2015}).

In the 90s, food policies were highly influenced by the “food security” approach led by the FAO.²¹ Due to the persistence of the economic crisis, the State maintained measures aimed at reducing public spending on social programs. As a central axis of social policy for attention to the poor, the Pronal and Pronasol programs continued. In this context, in 1997 the National Popular Subsistence Company (CONASUPO) was eliminated²² and the Education, Health and Food Program (Progresa) was created, which replaced the previous ones and was reoriented in favor of combating extreme poverty and strengthening food security, mainly in rural areas, under a direct subsidies scheme.

The Special Program for Food Security (PESA) implemented by the FAO and the Human Development Opportunities Program were created in 2002 as the social policy axis, operated by SEDESOL, giving continuity to the Progresa Program under the same subsidy scheme, with priority attention given to the most vulnerable population, through actions in its three components: education, health, and food.

Articles 4 and 27 of Mexico’s political constitution, where the right to food is recognized, were modified in 2011 due to persistent food problems in the country. In 2013, within this context, the bid to confront food insecurity is framed in a wider social political strategy called the National Crusade Against Hunger,²³ which, unlike previous programs, has an apparently much more effective specific regulatory framework for social policy, focused on the poorest communities. Thus, during 2014 Opportunidades was replaced by Prospera (a program of social inclusion), making this the main social governmental strategy to counter poverty in the country. It currently serves 6.8 million benefited families that receive support in education, health, and nutrition under the same direct subsidy scheme.

The main laws regulating the food issue in Mexico are: (1) The General Law of Social Development (GLSD), which governs the social policies within which attention to food is found and is coordinated by SEDESOL; (2) The Law of Sustainable Rural Development (LSRD), which covers national food security and sovereignty and is coordinated by SAGARPA. Article 6 of the GLSD points out that: “The rights for social development are as follows: education, health, food, housing, the enjoyment of a healthy environment, work, social safety, and those related to non-discrimination according to the terms of the Political Constitution of the United States of Mexico,” which largely defines its orientation.

SEDESOL operates various programs regarding the food dimension of social policies, such as the Program for Nutritional Support (PNS), the Social Milk Supply Program (PSMS), the Rural Supply Program (PRS) and the Opportunities Program (^{SEDESOL, 2012}; ^{López & Gallardo, 2015}). For its part, LSRD was approved in 2001, revoking the previous rules. It therefore constitutes the most advanced legal framework in Mexico in the field of rural development. As characteristics of its purpose, the multisectoral and territorial approaches stand out; part of three major categories: decentralization, concurrence and participation. It promotes the integration of the different Secretariats in rural areas through the Inter-Secretariat Commission for Sustainable Rural Development (ICSRD) as an agency of horizontal coordination at the federal level (^{Echeverri & Moscardi, 2005}).

Regarding Food Security and Sovereignty, the fact that the LSRD dedicates all of chapter XVII to it represents a major advance. However, the emphasis on a food security approach rather than on food sovereignty is clear.²⁴ In fact, the LSRD does not put forward a concrete proposal to address this situation, so how can we expect to achieve food sovereignty for Mexico while the search for an acceptable minimum of food self-sufficiency for the promotion of agricultural diversity and local production is not envisioned either? In this context, the expenditure allocated to the rural sector during the last eight years has increased from little more than 160 billion pesos in 2007 to 338.6 billion pesos in 2014. However, despite having one of the highest per capita expenditures for the field in Latin America, Mexico continues to have high levels of poverty and food insecurity (^{Robles & Ruiz, 2012}). In fact, fifteen years after the LSRD came into effect, the expected results in terms of rural development have not been obtained, as is corroborated by the statistical data already presented. Paradoxically, this is so while the reforms undertaken in the last decade place Mexico among the pioneering and most advanced countries in the design of multidimensional and integrated rural development policies.

In this same scenario, it is notable that the evolution in the composition of the resources of SEDESOL’s food programs in the period from 2007 to 2012 increased from 20,398.9 to 36,524.7 billion pesos, while in the same period, food poverty increased from 14.0 % to 19.7 % (Figure 1); such data demonstrates the poor efficiency of federal programs to counteract the national food issue (^{SEDESOL, 2012}). In this sense, as ^{Torres (2016)} points out, the Mexican State has assumed food insecurity as a problem of social marginalization rather than in an economic policy framework located in an asymmetric context of development.²⁸

Poverty and food insecurity: structural problems of economic development

Within the framework of a more in-depth analysis of the structural causes of poverty and food insecurity, ^{Torres (2016)} analyzes, in the frame of reference of the economic development model, how the agricultural policies of the last few decades in Mexico have had a negative impact on national food security. It is remarkable that, since the early 80s of the 20th century, economic policies to recover economic growth, especially those of the free market, reconfigured the Mexican food market, causing sequential declines in the GDP, a higher concentration of income, and deteriorating living conditions of the population, mainly in the food dimension.

In addition, by opting to buy food abroad rather than producing it locally, the Mexican government caused the structural crisis suffered by the primary sector, since it dismantled the agricultural support policy for national production of basic goods, leaving it unprotected against the vagaries of international trade, for which it was not prepared. Thus, after the considerable loss of national food production for self-consumption, Mexico is today a major agro-food importer, so therefore it is highly vulnerable and food dependent, the latter reflected in the negative agricultural and agro-food trade balances, causing a structural deficit.²⁶ Consequently, taking into account social space as a product of a multiplicity of relationships in the link between the local and the global, under the logic of world capitalism, and its model of economic development, relations of domination have evidently prevailed, generating complex imbalances in the socio-spatial structure both at an international level and within nations. “Globalization,” as a strategy of world expansion of the capitalist system in all categories, though permitting growth, is contradictory to social equity, inducing spatial concentration, thus favoring the location of economic activities in places with greater local allocation of natural resources or with other types of advantages. Capitalist logic is based on spatial inequality whose purpose is homogeneity and this logical relationship becomes hegemonic (^{Lefbvre, 1974}). In that regard, the problems of hunger and food insecurity are present to different degrees, which are linked to their structural and conjunctural causes, and in the actions and strategies to counteract them. Thus, historically, international economic development has had a direct impact on the Mexican context.

Hence, the globalized agro-food system is considered here as the cause of the world food crisis and its incidence in food insecurity. ^{Delgado (2010)} points out that the evolution of this agro-food system is linked to the imperatives of growth and accumulation within the current economic system.²⁷ In this regard, ^{McMichael (1998)} states that the system in the most recent period, which began in the 80s, corresponds to the “corporate system” associated with the aforementioned globalization. The trans-nationalization of the processes of production, distribution, and food consumption also proceed within the framework of this system where control or elimination of the points of friction that may limit the increased mobility of capital and its accumulation across borders is sought. Among the most noteworthy consequences of the functioning of the corporate regime are: speculation in food prices and hoarding,²⁸ the growing production of agro fuels and the allocation of food to animal production, the overproduction of food in countries such as the United States and Western Europe that through free trade seriously affects the production of food in developing countries, and the fact that the natural resources on which production depends are also being commodified and devastated. In general, the worldwide control of all areas of food provision is subject to a regime of global control by transnational companies. This demonstrates that there is an agro-food system that has not been built to satisfy our food needs, but rather to feed the limitless expansion and accumulation requirements of the large business organizations that govern the food business (^{Delgado, 2010}).

All this has given rise to the “world food crisis,” since hunger has expanded into a business, as a political and domination weapon, with the increasingly urgent need for the accumulation of economic wealth, even superseding the right to food, which represents the difference between living or dying for millions of people. In this manner, the hunger business imposed by developed countries and large global corporate businesses seems to be supported by the food security approach, which has contributed to the consolidation and sustainability of the economic development model. “This consolidates the role of the State in the directionality of food security, which is already clearly adjusted to the objectives and restrictions imposed by the dominant economic development model [...]” (^{Torres, 2016: 35} ).

Final considerations

Within the framework of public food security policies implemented by the Mexican government, the heterogeneity of rural territories, the complexity and the multidimensional nature of rural poverty are poorly addressed. Although the State recognizes the problem of hunger and food poverty, it is evident that, from the gov ernmental perspective, the commitment to combat this problem has been limited to social policies, devoid of recognition of it as a structural problem of economic development with regional and territorial asymmetries, which, despite government efforts to combat poverty and food insecurity, have not been altered.

The facts shown demonstrate the need for alternatives to combat the food issue in Mexico, but also the persistent hunger in a world that, paradoxically, produces more than enough food to feed its entire population, which is ethically unacceptable. Food poverty and hunger are a political problem, since the current global agro-food regime, through hegemonic control, dominates most of the food supply nationwide, favoring the concentration of wealth, social injustice, and the prolongation of the poverty cycle. In this sense, a process of structural change of the epistemic framework that guides this regime is urgent, which implies breaking away from the perverse colonial ideology that has convinced a large part of humanity that reality is sacrosanct. The call is to recover the self-determination of nations and peoples to produce and consume food, according to their cultural practices and beliefs, free from political and economic pressures.

In this context, establishing a dialogue between food security and sovereignty approaches is proposed, which takes on scientific and political relevance since none of them has achieved the results for which they were created. However, although they are based on different epistemic principles and their means and strategies are also es sentially different, they share some objectives and begin to meet at certain central points of the debate in which they have been generally analyzed. A dialogue of knowledge is conceived between the discourses and concepts of food security and sovereignty, their approaches and their practices, which explores the possibilities of convergence and complementarity between both perspectives, which until now have transpired as divergent. Of course, it cannot be to aggregate them, but rather to generate applied knowledge with structural changes that incorporate the human, ethical and holistic dimension to the relationship of human beings with each other and with nature, which represents true epistemic changes. This obviously implies an effort to initiate pluralism and seek consensus among the main political and institutional actors in favor of the population, where, through political processes and public policy, beyond ensuring the availability of food, democratic control of the agro-food system is guaranteed - from production and processing to distribution, the market, and consumption -, thus overcoming hunger and food poverty and insecurity under a rights-based approach.