Socio-territorial changes in peri-urban food production spaces in Central Mexico

Abstract

Agricultural practices are widespread in the periurban zones of developing countries. For periurban poor population, agriculture represents a complement to family income and an alternative for food supplies. For these peoples, the role of UPA (Urban and Periurban Agriculture) is very important. In Latin America, operation of periurban spaces has differentiated functions and roles: most of their inhabitants face conditions of marginalization or at best, subsist through the food self-production. Periurban poors are facing a double situation: the degradation of their activity and the transformation of their peasant condition; at the time, a conflict by the dispute for the space with other social groups, with different interests and meanings. In this paper we discuss about diverse manifestations of territorial restructuration in a global context, specifically in periurban areas of metropolitan system of Central Mexico. Above all, its interest lies in an analysis of these transformations within the context of the old rural spaces, those which have been affected by the advance of urbanization. The development of periurban agriculture in some cities of Central Mexico has established important patterns of territory transformation, either in changes of use of land or in the structure of production, or in social and cultural changes. Periurban agriculture is one of the several activities in this territory, that remains with another non-farming activities, mainly manufactures and tertiary, that are having an quick diffusion.