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This paper evaluates the relationship between investing in workforce well-being and profitability of listed companies in Mexico compared to European companies from an Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) investor perspective. In this case, the Refinitiv workforce score or High-Performance Work Policies (HPWP) is used as an indicator of the quality of workforce well-being by including the industry effects (economic and business sectors) and the behavioral (sentiment) factors as control variables. Specifically, this article examines the relationships between HPWP, stock price changes (measured as a percentage), profitability (ROE), and market risk (betas). We used a sample of companies from the Refinitiv Mexico and European stock indices for this purpose. In the Mexican case, the results show that a higher level of well-being promotion relates to better company profits. The opposite happens in European companies. Regarding market prices, European companies show higher prices when they have higher HPWP and Mexican companies confirm the opposite. Regarding market risk, only European basic materials with high HPWP show less risk. Finally, in almost all Mexican business sectors, the relationship between market risk and workforce well-being is negative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on extant literature on call centers and my own research in digitization in Mexico and Brazil, in this paper I address the relations between culture, labor, and digital technology in informational capitalism. Drawing on media theory and the anthropological work of Ana Tsing and Sidney Mintz, among others, I propose a conceptual framework on labor's digital dialectics, within which the contradictions between algorithmic logic and the cultural layer occur. I argue that current technological subordination is based on a set of frictions and tensions that intensificate the contradiction between technology and culture as subordinated digitization while at the same time extensificate capitalistic informatization as digital subordination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite a historically large degree of philopatry to the Gulf Coastal Plains wintering area in the United States and Mexico, the midcontinent population of greater white‐fronted geese (Anser albifrons) has demonstrated changes in their winter distribution in recent decades, warranting investigation into the timing and magnitude of change. We evaluated spatiotemporal patterns in winter band recovery distribution from 1974–2018 and midwinter waterfowl survey counts for midcontinent greater white‐fronted geese. We used an overlap similarity index to compare annual winter band recovery distributions with a historical reference distribution of 1955–1974, followed by a changepoint analysis to assess the timing and magnitude of distributional change. Our analyses revealed a 2‐stage shift in the distribution of winter band recoveries from midcontinent greater white‐fronted geese that occurred following the 1994–1995 season and the 2009–2010 season. As a result, the spatiotemporal distribution of midcontinent greater white‐fronted goose band recoveries can be explained in 3 distinct time eras: the historical era (1974–1995), the transitional era (1995–2010), and the current era (2010–2018). Patterns in midwinter waterfowl survey counts were consistent with changes in winter band recovery distributions, providing further support that midcontinent greater white‐fronted geese have shifted their core winter distribution nearly 750 km northeast over the last 5 decades from the Gulf Coastal Plain to the Mississippi Alluvial Valley. Quantifying the timing and magnitude of this shift in winter distribution of midcontinent greater white‐fronted geese provides clarity to previous patterns in and changes to harvest distribution and could be used to facilitate future decisions regarding harvest management, regulatory frameworks, and habitat conservation planning efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stabilizing farm revenues is a goal of agricultural policies around the world, especially in vulnerable regions with limited access to crop insurance. One potential pathway to revenue stability follows the agricultural "insurance hypothesis", which holds that crop diversification has stabilizing effects on productivity that mitigate risks from environmental stressors and market shocks, thereby producing a form of natural insurance against crop loss. While substantial support for the hypothesis exists, most studies testing the hypothesis have occurred at the farm or landscape levels and have controlled for a limited range of socioeconomic and environmental factors. This study tests the insurance hypothesis by examining the effects of crop species production diversity on revenue stability in low-income regions of southern Mexico. Here, rural farms experience chronic vulnerability to climatic shocks and market forces. Using parametric and non-parametric approaches, three groups of models are used to examine the effects of socio-environmental factors and farm structural and functional characteristics on the crop diversity-revenue stability relationship. Additionally factored in the relationship are the effects of cropping portfolios: statistical groupings of different crop species (n = 304) that characterize distinct farming areas (1340 municipalities). Findings support the insurance hypothesis and underscore the importance of crop diversification in the region. However, findings also show that irrigation plays an even stronger role than crop diversification in stabilizing farm revenues. Furthermore, some crop portfolios negatively impact revenue stability, including some portfolios with high crop diversity. In sum, a better understanding of farm contexts—contributing factors and cropping portfolios—is key to designing policies that help stabilize farm revenues through crop diversification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The fruit and vegetable industry is an important segment of the U.S. agriculture. The 2017 U.S. Agriculture Census shows that the industry had total sales of USD 48 billion from over 10 million acres of land. However, over the last two decades, production of major fruit and vegetable crops in the United States has been declining while imports have grown significantly. The rapidly growing imports have posed challenges to the sustainability of the U.S. domestic industry. This study provides a systematic industry review of fresh fruit and vegetable production and trade between the United States and Mexico, by far the largest source of U.S. imports, highlighting the structural shift in the market over the last two decades and the caveats for industry sustainability. The analysis shows that Florida, Georgia, and California are among the states that face the strongest competition from Mexico. Among the 10 crops reviewed, berry, tomato, pepper, and cucumber production has been affected the most. The study further discusses the factors driving the rapid growth of imports and shows the importance of innovation and policy reform to the sustainability of the U.S. fruit and vegetable industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although agricultural intensification generally has homogenizing effects on landscapes that reduce crop diversity, the specific effects of different input strategies on crop diversity are unclear. This study examines the effects of irrigation inputs on crop species diversity in Mexico. We assess the richness and evenness diversity of 297 crop species across 2455 municipalities while controlling for environmental and socioeconomic factors and farm structural and functional characteristics. Using a quantile regression approach, we assess relationships across conditional quantiles of low-, medium-, and high-diversity farm regions. Results show irrigation level (% cropland irrigated) is a strong positive predictor of crop species richness and evenness diversity across all quantile regions. Moreover, the quantile effects of irrigation on evenness diversity are five times greater in low-diversity rather than high-diversity regions. With implications for agricultural water policy in Mexico, this study illustrates the potential benefits of sustainable irrigation expansion in water-rich but irrigation-poor farming regions. Specifically, by enhancing crop species diversity, carefully targeted irrigation expansion can support the transition to sustainable intensification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Perhaps no concept has shaped discussions of capitalism and its contemporary transformations more than that of ongoing primitive accumulation. This paper examines, accounts for, and unpacks how primitive accumulation came, within a certain genre of conversations, to be so central. While there have been prior critiques of its usage, notably by Robert Brenner, few have returned to the source of the modern framing of the concept, Rosa Luxemburg. Through a discussion of David Harvey's updating of primitive accumulation as accumulation by dispossession, I return to Luxemburg in order to extract two methodological principles from her work: follow the production of aspects of accumulation and think their organic link and track violence. I then deploy these methodological principles in a discussion of certain critical processes of accumulation in contemporary Mexico to demonstrate the spatialized "organic link" of Luxemburg and Harvey has been violently reconstituted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between 2012 and 2016 a virulent strain of coffee rust reduced Mexican yields by more than 50%, and it is still devastating production. The government has responded by replacing traditional arabica plants vulnerable to the pathogen with resistant, high-yielding varieties to recover the sector and encourage long-term adaptation to a disease that cannot be eradicated. However, this contribution will attempt to show that the intractable nature of the epidemic and the biological characteristics of resistant varieties threaten the survival of independent coffee organisations and their agroecological shade coffee systems. With little or no possibility of recovering production without the use of resistant plants, the alternative production and marketing models that these organisations have constructed over the past three decades face unprecedented challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the class dynamics of food sovereignty in Mexico and Ecuador. It argues that the nature of contemporary demands for food sovereignty is heavily influenced by the outcomes of peasant movements' historical and ongoing internal class dynamics. Processes of class differentiation within peasant organizations in both countries have led to the interests of certain classes predominating over or at the expense of others. Despite La Vía Campesina's projection of 'unity in diversity', incorporating sometimes conflicting class interests into the movement is particularly challenging. As such, class analysis must be brought back into debates around food sovereignty in order to gauge (and potentially further) the movement's transformative potential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Migration provides a strategy for rural Mexican households to cope with, or adapt to, weather events and climatic variability. Yet prior studies on environmental migration in this context have not examined the differences between choices of internal (domestic) or international movement. In addition, much of the prior work relied on very coarse spatial scales to operationalise the environmental variables such as rainfall patterns. To overcome these limitations, we use fine-grain rainfall estimates derived from NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission satellite. The rainfall estimates are combined with population and agricultural census information to examine associations between environmental changes and municipal rates of internal and international migration during 2005-2010. Our findings suggest that municipal-level rainfall deficits relative to historical levels are an important predictor of both international and internal migration, especially in municipalities with predominantly rainfed agriculture. Although our findings do not contradict results of prior studies using coarse spatial resolution, they offer clearer evidence and a more spatially nuanced examination of migration as related to social and environmental vulnerability. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This commentary on the Feeding Teotihuacan collection of papers provides an 'outsider' perspective on the contributions, by an archeologist who conducts research on agriculture and plant use by the ancient Maya. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the monthly data for beef exports from the United States to Mexico between January 2000 to December 2012 and based on the Box- Jenkins methodology, an autorregressive moving average (ARMA) model was constructed to forecast the behavior of imported beef. Based on the correlogram and the Dickey-Fuller test on the time series, no evidence of non stationary behavior was found, the process was continued using ordinary least squares to estimate the parameters of a group of models with different autorregressive AR(p) and moving average MA(q) combinations until two were selected: a AR (1) and a ARMA (1, 2). To establish which model better represented the data generating process, the regression coefficients together with the Akaike and Schwarz criteria were used, to determine the presence of autocorrelation both the correlograms were inspected and the Ljung-Box test applied, the result of this evaluation lead to the selection of the AR (1) model, however after testing the forecasting ability of both models it was found that the ARMA (1, 2) model had a better fitting. Although the predicted values overestimated the real values it was concluded that this type of time series model may be considered as a useful tool to short term forecast Mexican imports of US beef. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In contrast to specialty coffee marketing, which tends to overlook the history and political economic position of real coffee producers, coffee tourism provides producers with the opportunity to shape their own self-image in the marketplace. This article employs two coffee tourism projects in the Mexican state of Chiapas as case studies, one that is managed by a cooperative of small coffee farmer organizations and another that is situated on a plantation that is one stop on a coffee tourism route. Both projects actively work to differentiate their coffee within an increasingly competitive specialty coffee market by recasting colonial narratives. In the case of the plantation, which is recast as a family farm, the historical exploitation of laborers is framed as patronage, whereas the smallholders are represented by the cooperative as savvy businessmen who have overcome inequitable power relations through self-organization and the entry into direct markets. The comparison is used to initiate a conversation within anthropology about the understudied, yet rapidly expanding, domain of agritourism. Consequently, the article concludes with a discussion of some of the important questions the comparison raises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discussions of maize agriculture in Mexico often treat 'maize' as a uniform commodity, sold in a relatively homogeneous market, and for which there is a single, 'economically rational' production strategy. Based on qualitative research on maize value chains, we suggest that this unitary notion entails significant oversimplifications. We offer a heuristic model of farm-size related 'profitability crossover,' based on observations of highland maize varieties' roles within a series of farm-cycle opportunities and constraints. We suggest that while improved maize varieties may be profitable for large-scale farms taking advantage of economies of scale, landrace cultivation may offer advantages to small- to medium-scale farmers, who utilize a diverse range of input strategies, and sell their products in specialty markets. Understanding maize agriculture as a multi-product and multi-market pursuit rather than uniform commodity production would add greater depth to policy and academic debates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers news briefs related to drug addiction. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) World Drug 2011 describes the prevalence rates of illegal drug use and production. The report "Monitoring Alcohol Marketing in Africa" is the first product partnership between European Centre for Monitoring Alcohol Marketing (EUAM), the Dutch Institute for Alcohol Policy (STAP), and the World Health Organization (WHO). Dutch government plans to reduce drug tourism in the Netherlands.

Rapid growth of U.S. dairy exports to Mexico began even before the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and has been fueled by rapid population increases coupled with an expanding Mexican economy. This study uses a nonlinear approximate almost ideal demand system (NLAIDS) to estimate own and cross-price elasticities in the Mexican cheese import market to better understand market behavior and to assess the comparative position of the UnitedStates relative to other cheese market participants. Results of this study imply that attributes of cheese play a strong role in the composition of Mexican cheese import market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the major adjustments brought on by the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was a change in the relationship between Mexican agricultural support institutions and the small-scale agricultural sector. Post-NAFTA restructuring programs sought to correct previous inefficiencies in this sector, but they have also had the effect of marginalizing the producers who steward and manage the country’s reserve of maize ( Zea mays) genetic diversity. Framed by research suggesting that certain maize varieties in a rain-fed farming region in southern Sonora are in danger of loss due chiefly to long-term drought, this article explores the ramifications of post-NAFTA agricultural policies for in situ maize diversity conservation. Qualitative methods, including semi-structured interviews with agricultural support institutions and participant observation with farmers, were used to gather data on dryland farmers’ access to research and extension, as well as possibilities for collective action. In southern Sonora, agricultural support is oriented primarily toward high-tech production, and there are structural barriers to small-scale farmers’ access to research and extension institutions. Further, collective action around agriculture is limited. These circumstances represent significant limitations to farmers’ options for accessing new techniques which might help maintain maize diversity in the context of economic and environmental change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Crop genetic diversity and poverty are linked: first, resource-poor farmers often maintain genetic diversity; and second, crop diversity, when properly valued by the market, has the potential to alleviate poverty. This article examines this supposition by drawing on three case studies of the intersection of the market with poverty and maize diversity in Mexico. These suggest that the bulk market for maize offers little room for maize landraces (local maize varieties known as criollo maize), in that it does not reward qualitative variation in maize grain and instead presents incentives that make planting 'improved' maize germplasm the rational economic choice for small-scale farmers. Meanwhile, attempts to add value to maize landraces via market differentiation have had varying success. Although there is potential for differentiated markets to contribute to successful business models and poverty alleviation, these cases exhibit trade-offs between product consistency, investment of labour and resources, and genetic-diversity conservation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Samples of rice from Mexican and USA retail stores were analyzed for the presence of transgenic (GM) events using real-time PCR. In screening for the CaMV35S promoter sequence ( 35SP), positive results were found in 49 and 35% of the Mexican and American samples, respectively. In further investigations in Mexican samples, 43% were positive for P35S::bar, with two above the quantifiable limit; these were 0.07% and 0.05% GMO. Fourteen out of the sixteen positive samples were labeled as imported from the USA. In testing samples bought in American retail shops, 24% showed positive results, all below the quantifiable range. It could be deduced that P35S::bar positive samples were Liberty Link® (LL) rice. In distinguishing between LL601 and LL62, end-point PCR was used, corroborating the P35S::bar amplicon length difference of these events. LL62 was found in one rice sample purchased in Mexico and two in the USA samples. Its presence was verified with the 35S terminator sequence. All other LL positive samples contained LL601. None of the samples analyzed showed the presence of Bt63 rice. The LL rice varieties found have been identified as not being commercially cultivated, and so their presence requires further investigation. 35SP was also present in samples which did not have any LL rice. Maize sequences could not be detected in any of the samples; however, soybean DNA was found in Mexican and USA rice samples. The Roundup Ready® trait was detected in trace amounts in 16 and 6% of the rice samples bought in Mexico and the USA, respectively. Real-time PCR was shown to be the method of choice for the sensitive and rapid screening of commodities and retail samples for the detection of GM and other contamination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Like the rest of the poor periphery, Mexico fought with de-industrialization in the century before the 1870s. Yet, Mexican manufacturing defended itself better than did the rest of the poor periphery. Why Mexican exceptionalism? This article decomposes the sources of de-industrialization into productivity events abroad, globalization forces connecting Mexico to those markets, and domestic forces. It uses a neo-Ricardian model to implement the decomposition, advocates a price dual approach, and develops a new price and wage data base. Mexican exceptionalism was due to weaker Dutch disease effects, better wage competitiveness, and the policy autonomy to foster industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Well over 4,000 unauthorised migrants have lost their lives in the U.S.-Mexico border region since 1995. These deaths have occurred at the intersection of a dramatically strengthened U.S. boundary policing enforcement apparatus and persistent and arguably growing out-migratory pressures in Mexico and beyond. A number of the deceased have come from coffee-growing and -harvesting households and regions in Mexico and Central America, areas devastated by unstable commodity prices that reached their lowest point in a century in 2000-2001. This article explores the discursive and empirical interrelationship between a neoliberalised international coffee market, an increasingly policed U.S.-Mexico boundary, and migrant deaths. In doing so, it finds evidence to suggest that there is a causal link between the international crisis in prices received by coffee bean producers, out-migration by individuals in households and communities dependent on the coffee sector for their livelihoods, and migrant fatalities. It thus illustrates that the age of neoliberalism is one in which processes of nationalisation, liberalisation, and regulation exist simultaneously in space and time, the intersection of which in a world of deep inequality sometimes produces untimely death for those on the global socio-economic margins. Finally, the article highlights the limitations of extant research on this matter and lays out an agenda for future investigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A case is argued for the constitutive role of commodity value (use + exchange + symbolic), and its shifting triangulations, in Mesoamerican and Mexican indigenous culture. This role cross-cuts historical epochs but assumes more pervasive influence historically in proportion to the spread of integrative markets and monetization. Given their commodity value matrix, indigenous direct-producing subjects, yesterday and today, are assumed to economize, regardless of the nature and destination of their labor or products or the particular social relations organizing the latter's disposition. Particular forms of commodity value triangulation require empirical determination at specific spatial/temporal coordinates. Critical evaluations of work by Karl Marx, Guillermo Bonfil, Alejandro MarroquIn, Manuel Gamio and Arturo Warman, together with ethnographic material, are used to support the case for the commodity value approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the impact of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) on the state of free trade in Mexico. Effect of the adoption of NAFTA on the country's employment status; Disadvantages of the agreement for manufacturing workers; Fundamental issues concerning the country's international policy directions.

This article aims to cover an important aspect of the economic history of Porfirian Mexico: the integration of agricultural domestic markets. Because corn was the staple crop of the commercial agricultural sector, it becomes the protagonist of this story. Panel techniques are applied to a price-convergence model. Al- though still unfinished on the eve of the Mexican Revolution, corn market integration substantially accelerated during the Porfiriato and ended up further integrated than estimated by Kuntz. Railroads were not only indispensable to the economic growth of Mexico, but also played a key role in the process of corn market integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the degree to which world price signals have been transmitted into domestic prices for eight countries and ten commodities, a total of 31 country/commodity pairs. The main characteristic of these countries was that they all undertook substantial policy reforms during the mid-1980s to early 1990s. The paper investigates the effect of reforms on the speed at which signals were transmitted to domestic markets and on the extent of price transmission. We find that Chile, Mexico, and Argentina are the only countries whose domestic commodity markets were integrated with world markets. For the remaining cases (Ghana, Madagascar, Indonesia, Egypt, and Colombia) in only a few country/commodity pairs is there some passthrough of world price changes. In terms of the effects of policy reforms, in the majority of the cases the hypothesis of a structural break following the reform year is rejected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the ideas of Mexican elites about the international market during the porfiriato, a period from 1876 to 1910 marked by imperialism and monopoly capitalism. Adherence of the Porfirian elites to a laissez-faire ideology; Application of social Darwinism to the level of the nation state by members of the intelligentsia; Continuity and change in the intelligentsia's fear of the United States.

Reports on the effects of the amendment to the law governing the natural gas industry in Mexico. End of the long-standing monopoly of Petroleos Mexicanos SA, the state-owned oil and gas company, over the transportation, storage and distribution of natural gas; Benefits of the new regulatory structure for private investment in natural gas infrastructure; Authority of the Comision Reguladora de Energia to set price for first-hand sales that reflects the gas opportunity costs.