The Continuing Struggle for Maize

In this monograph Elizabeth Fitting summarizes a decade of work on the debates surrounding Mexican national policy as it relates to small-scale agriculture, corn production, and the lives of corn farmers in the Tehuacán Valley of the Mexican state of Puebla. In the introduction Fitting states that her intention is to “….provide readers with … a ‘political economy of meaning ’ of the corn debates, which asks under what conditions food The Continuing Struggle for Maize 415 innovations are accepted, ignored or rejected…”(1). She notes that the book is meant to address the impact of neoliberal corn policies that affect maize producers and consumers in Mexico. Fitting is also interested in the extent to which the neoliberal project of transforming peasants into new rural subjects—either agricultural entrepreneurs focused on commercial and export agriculture, or a cheap labor force—has been successful. She draws on both national and international data, interviews and observation of policy makers and activists and an ethnographic case study of corn farmer