Three children out of every four in Central America and Mexico go hungry, despite abundant arable land, skilled farmers, and a favorable climate. How did this situation develop, and why has it been allowed to persist? In many Central American countries civil war and social upheaval have meant that crop production lags behind population growth. Food aid and export-led agricultural development strategies, promoted by donor organizations and national governments alike, have only exacerbated the situation. Development strategies such as the extensive promotion of livestock production have caused environmental degradation while failing to provide affordable food for the people. Harvest of Want demonstrates how hunger and malnutrition can exist simultaneously with growth in agricultural production, especially if crops are destined for foreign markets. The book shows how national and international class interests and power relationships have meshed with donor and debt strategies to create food and nutritional deficits in many Central American and Mexican communities. The contributors conclude that hunger and malnutrition are political, not technical, problems and cannot be solved merely by improving agricultural production practices. What is needed is a social commitment to an equitable distribution of resources and the political will to provide for all groups in society.

Although national governments and international agencies have committed vast sums of money to development, many projects have not only failed to improve the lives of the poor but in some cases have created additional social and economic problems. Such failures can often be traced to an inadequate understanding of the socio-cultural reality of the people most directly affected and to a lack of their participation in project planning, implementation, and evaluation. In this collection of essays, scholars and practitioners from diverse disciplines examine many of the perplexing social issues of development planning from the perspective of social impact analysis. Drawing on national, regional, and local case studies, the authors demonstrate why sociocultural factors are seldom adequately understood and discuss how they can be effectively incorporated into the planning process.

International migration between countries in Latin America became increasingly important during the twentieth century, but for a long time it was the subject of only limited research. Whiteford sets the Argentina-Bolivia experience in historical perspective by examining the macrolevel factors that influenced social change in both countries and brought streams of migration into Argentina. Seasonal labor, the expansion of capitalist agriculture, international migration, and urbanization are central topics in this in-depth study of Bolivian migrants in Northwest Argentina. Whiteford's vivid portrayal of the lives and working conditions of the migrants is based on two years of research during which he lived with the workers on a sugar plantation and, after the harvest, accompanied them to other farms and to the city of Salta in their search for more work. He traces the development of plantation agriculture in Northwest Argentina and the processes by which the plantation gained access to cheap labor and maintained control over it. As Bolivians migrated to Argentina in ever greater numbers, many recruited for the harvest remained. Whiteford's analysis of the diverse strategies employed by workers and their families to support themselves during the post-harvest season is a major contribution to migration literature. The four distinct but related patterns of migration that he describes created a labor reserve that transcends rural/urban designations, one that is utilized by employers in both the countryside and the city.

Agrarian reforms transformed the Mexican countryside in the late twentieth century but without, in many cases, altering fundamental power relationships. This study of the Tehuacan Valley in the state of Puebla highlights different strategies to manipulate the local implementation of federal government programs. With their very differing successes in the struggle to regain and maintain control of land and water rights, these strategies raise important questions about the meaning of the phrase "locally controlled development." Because Mexico is dependent on irrigation for 45 percent of its cash crop production, national policy has focused on developing vast government controlled and financed irrigation systems. In the Tehuacan Valley, however, the inhabitants have developed a complex irrigation system without government aid or supervision. Yet, in contrast to most parts of Mexico, water rights can be bought and sold as a commodity, leading to accumulation, stratification, and emergence of a regional elite whose power is based on ownership of land and water. The analysis provides an important contribution to the understanding of local control. The findings of this study will be important to a wide audience involved in the study of irrigation, local agricultural systems, and the interplay between local power structures and the national government in developing countries. The book also presents unique material on gravity-fed, horizontal wells, known as qanat in the Middle East, which had been unknown in the literature on Latin America before this book.

The North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, has been one of the most hotly contested political and economic issues of the past twenty years. Covering an angle largely overlooked by the U.S. media, this volume examines small family farms in Mexico that have fared worse economically since NAFTA's passage. A distinguished group of contributors provide historical background, policy analysis, case studies, comparisons with large agribusiness corporations, and recommendations for ways to improve the situation of small farms in the future. This volume will be essential to the understanding of multinational trade issues and agriculture in the twenty-first century.