The Global Economy of Food

At the beginning of the 21st century, nutrition in many of the poorer communities around the world presents a puzzle. In the 1970s, the Mexican government began to develop the economically marginal Yucatan peninsula into a tourist destination for air travelers and cruise ships. Back in the farming village of Yalcoba and other villages like it, women remained at home with extra burdens of household labor and child care for large families. Under the new trade regime, Mexico&s;s locally grown corn could not compete economically because of the crop subsidies enjoyed by farmers in the United States. A food system includes all of the steps involved in feeding a population: growing, harvesting, processing, packaging, transporting, marketing, consuming, and disposing of food. The Industrial Revolution initiated another stage of the globalization of food systems in the 18th century. Crops grown on plantations in the colonies were exported as bulk commodities to the industrializing home countries.

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