Burning Questions
Fellowship Award Winners

Enrique Mejía

Location: Sweden
Primary academic field: Economic history and human ecology
Award category: PhD Holder

Topics to be Addressed during the Award Period:

How industrial livestock production influence the maize grown in rural Mexico, affecting seed choices, agrobiodiversity, and small-scale farming systems, and how these impacts are historically shaped.

• Unpack the historical embedding of Mexican maize farmers in an unequal transnational market system.
• Explain the simplification of maize systems in Mexico.
• Highlight the social and environmental impacts of feed maize expansion in the Valles Abajeños region of Guanajuato, Mexico.
• Bring attention to the emergence of regulatory and grassroots responses to industrial maize expansion.

Some of the Things We Really Liked when We Read the Application:

• This application focuses on a "hidden" impact of industrial animal agriculture that is seldom discussed because it seems indirect and distant. But look closer, the ramifications are in fact deep and troubling. The "hidden" impact is this: Due to the need to come up with enormous quantities of grains to feed the vast number of industrially farmed animals, the industrialization of livestock production has profoundly shaped what, where, and how grains are grown. Maize in rural Mexico - considered to be the cradle of maize domestication - serves as an excellent illustration of this impact. Instead of growing a diversity of traditional maize varieties and species, small-scale farmers in rural Mexico choose to grow only maize most suitable to be used for feeding industrial livestock. This negatively affects traditional farming practices and contributes significantly to the loss of agrodiverstiy.
• The attention to the big picture and larger context, taking into account historical forces and broad developments such as how U.S. agriculture policies and the North America Free Trade Agreement play important roles. Tiny Beam Fund is in favor of analyses that are well-rounded and nuanced, not too narrowly focused, black-and-white, or viewed with "tunnel vision". The applicant will take a political economy and economic history approach to understand the wider context.