Internationalization of the labor process in agriculture: A case study of agroindustrial development in Mexico's El Bajio

This dissertation examines the impact of an agroindustry-led form of development on the conditions of wage employment in agriculture. As a case study, the region of Mexico known as El Bajio is considered. Long recognized to be an extremely fertile area for agricultural production, the present conditions of the region's agricultural development have been shaped, to a great extent, by the tremendous amount of agroindustrial investment which has occurred there over the past 25 to 30 years. This development was largely financed by U.S. capital which faced dwindling profits at home in the post-Bracero era.;An analysis of labor market operation and wage determination in the agricultural sector is undertaken to identify the mechanisms by which these scarce job opportunities are governed. Although the labor market exhibits a high level of development and appears devoid of any extra-economic arrangements, such as are found in many areas of the Third World, wage determination does not follow the dictates of supply and demand as much as it does that of other factors, such as farm size, geographical location and type of worker.;The dissertation concludes that the erosion of agricultural employment opportunities experienced by El Bajio is not a necessary result of agroindustrial development. On the contrary, the elimination of institutional biases which favor mechanization, in general, and sorghum production, in particular, together with the encouragement of a cropping pattern for smaller producers which combines maize production with fruit and vegetable cultivation could lead to both more employment and less seasonal variation in labor demand.;Given Mexico's serious regional and international migration problems, the employment generation capacity of alternative development patterns becomes crucial. Yet, El Bajio has suffered a net decline in agricultural labor demand since the introduction of these agroindustrial plants. Through a decomposition analysis, the dissertation demonstrates that even though irrigation has expanded greatly throughout the region and yield improvements have been phenomenal, labor demand has not increased, as could have been expected, due to the accompanying changes in crop composition and adoption of labor-saving technology.