Human Ecology, VoL 21, No.

1, 1993

The Intensification of Traditional Agriculture

Among Yucatec Maya Farmers: Facing up to the
Dilemma of Livelihood Sustainability 1
Sally Humphries 2

This article discusses the change among Yucatec Maya farmers from traditional
shifting m i l p a agriculture to intensive horticultural production for the Mexican
market. The process of agricultural intensification among th& group of peasant
farmers has involved movement toward an increasingly sedentary form of
production which has heightened reliance on the use of chemicals with negative
consequences for the environment. The research, which focuses on the pressure
on producers to abandon more sustainable forms of cultural controls against
crop loss in favor o f modern chemical controls, raises the issue of the
transferability of sustainable traditional technology to small commercial
farmers in the tropics. More specifically, the article draws attention to the
sometimes overlooked issue o f economic, as well as environmental,
sustainability in discussions on agricultural development and resource
management.
KEY WORDS: Maya agriculture; traditional agriculture; sustainable agriculture; agricultural
intensification.

INTRODUCTION
Increasing recognition of the importance of sustainable resource mana g e m e n t for fragile t r o p i c a l e n v i r o n m e n t s has b r o u g h t with it a surge o f
i n t e r e s t in t r a d i t i o n a l m a n a g e m e n t systems as a l t e r n a t i v e s to highly t e c h n o -

1parts of this article were presented at the 89th Annual Meeting of the American
Anthropological Association in New Orleans in November 1990, as well as at a conference
in M6rida in Yucatan entitled "La modernizaci6n de la milpa en Yueatfin: utopia o realidad"
in May 1991.
zCIAT, A. A6reo 6713, Call, Colombia.
87
0300-7839/93/0300--0087507.00/0 9 1993 Plenum Publishing Corporation

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Humphries

logical development solutions (e.g., Alcom, 1990; Anderson, 1990; Gliessman, 1984; G6mez-Pompa, 1987; Hecht, 1989; Norgaard, 1981; Posey, 1983;
Posey and Bal6e, 1989). Interest in the potential of these systems raises the
issues of the transfer of traditional technology and knowledge to small commercial farmers and whether such transfer is appropriate (Brokensha, 1989;
Wilken, 1989). It would certainly be naive to believe that all traditional cultivators live in harmony with nature, and what often appears as sustainable
management is, in reality, the product of low population pressure and hence,
minimal environmental disruption (Wilken, 1989, p. 47). Today small farmers are under pressure to intensify production in the face of increasing
land/person ratios and growing need for cash income to purchase consumer
goods, educational materials, medical services, etc. Thus, if traditional technology is to be transferred it will generally need to be adaptable to intensification.
The crux of the issue is whether it is possible to maintain the integrity
of sustainable traditional systems under the impact of market integration.
Low input agricultural systems that have long been sustainable under production for primarily use value, may no longer be so once the goal becomes
that of exchange, or more explicitly, that of profit. Most importantly, those
cultural practices which are, in essence, "safety-first" mechanisms (Roumasset, 1979) aimed at minimizing variation in expected output and assuring
household subsistence under environmental uncertainty, are often lost during the transition to market integration. And it is precisely the safeguards
inherent in traditional systems against widescale loss caused by variations in
the weather or pest outbreaks that have the effect of making them more
environmentally sustainable than systems aimed at income maximization.
Thurston's (1992) work provides an excellent discussion of some of
the safeguards inherent in traditional systems which serve to buffer producers against the vagaries of nature. These safeguards are embedded in
cultural practices, which include, among others, careful site selection, use
of landraces, timing of planting, manipulation of plant densities, intercropping, and fallowing. Traditional farmers adopt a "portfolio" of such techniques in order to spread "natural" risk (Norgaard, 1989). 3 However, as
farmers become integrated into the market, economic considerations outside of immediate subsistence requirements begin to shape their behavior.
For example, producers may find that there is little customer demand for
the landraces which they have traditionally cultivated; that the transportability of produce may override factors involving the ecological determina-

3In contrast to the risk spreading mechanisms listed here, irrigation, long used by many
traditional cultivators, provides a means to reduce "natural" risk through direct water control.

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89

tion of site selection and, indeed, influence the selection of the crops themselves; or that the timing of marketing may become more critical than the
timing of planting, while labor costs resulting from harvesting a diverse
range of intercrops or varieties may be too high to allow crop owners to
compete in the market place, etc. In other words, producers rapidly discover that to disobey market indicators is to go out of business, and adjustments to the system must be made. Thus it is the built-in safety features
of traditional systems, which make them sustainable in the environmental
sense, that may undermine their viability as economic systems once the
primary goal is income generation rather than direct consumption.
This raises the obvious, but sometimes overlooked, component of economic sustainability in definitions of sustainable resource management. It
is easy to be beguiled by the physical integrity of a given system without
sufficient regard for the individuals whose livelihoods depend upon the
value of the system's outputs. The importance placed here on economic as
well as environmental sustainability is similar to that put forward by Chambers (1988). He argues that it makes little sense to talk in terms of a sustainable resource base if this is conceived of as separate from those who
manage it. For this reason Chambers prefers to use the concept of "sustainable livelihood security." Unfortunately, few of the studies dealing with
sustainable alternatives for the management of fragile environments provide detailed information on the costs and benefits of these alternate systems (Anderson, 1990, p. 17), and therefore our understanding of how
secure these options are is partial at best. However, even when cost-benefit
information based on normal market conditions is provided, it cannot substitute for a description of what is going on at the production end--namely,
a focus on livelihood strategies and the accommodations producers make
in order to adapt to market forces which, in reality, are rarely ever stable.
The contexts out of which traditional and modern agricultural technology arise represent "two agroeconomic worlds" (Norgaard, 1989, p. 201)
and the application of traditional technology within the present global system will almost inevitably lead to changes in its use, as the estimation of
market risk begins to outweigh perceived "natural" risk, Modern technology
contributes to this process by helping to override short-term ecological concerns. For example, pesticides help to reduce the risk of losses from pest
attack and plant disease in the short term, while incorrect usage increases
the chances of long-term risk arising out of environmental damage (Norgaard, 1989, p. 204). The possibility for manipulating risk in this way is
liable to lead to modifications in hitherto sustainable techniques, which may
undermine system integrity. Those who wish to transfer low input technologies to commercial producers must generally confront this dilemma.

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90

Presented below is a case study concerning the process of agricultural

intensification among Maya producers that lends substance to this dilemma.
The study is based on fieldwork conducted in Yucatan, Mexico between
1986 and 1991.

MAYA AGRICULTURE: ANCIENT AND MODERN

Maya agriculture has long been a subject of interest where sustainability issues are concerned. In the past, Mayanists generally supported that
hypothesis that the Collapse of the Classic Maya Civilization was the result
of over-exploitation of the environment generated by shortened fallowing
and limits on food production associated with population pressure. This
conclusion emanated from the so-called "swidden hypothesis," which held
that lowland Maya agriculture in the Pre-Colombian era could be inferred
from the predominance of contemporary slash-and-burn techniques known
as milpa agriculture (Turner, 1978). While this view is still supported by a
number of Mayanists, more recent scholarship has shifted in a new direction (Flannery, 1982; Harrison and Turner, 1978); this direction takes into
consideration the diversity of microenvironments within the Maya lowlands
and the possibility for varied agricultural techniques associated with this
diversity. Evidence of varied forms of production include the remains of
raised fields and canals, indicating wetland cultivation (Harris, 1978), reservoirs capable of storing rainwater and canals for dryland irrigation
(Matheny, 1982), and terracing and walls indicating demarcated fields for
sedentary dryland agriculture (Turner, 1978).
While opinion has tended to move away from theories supporting environmental degradation as the prime cause of the Collapse of Classic Maya
Civilization, some scholars have postulated that the agricultural techniques
of the Ancient Lowland Maya could not have been responsible for an "ecological collapse" given evidence available from contemporary practices
(Barrera et aL, 1977). In this case, indigenous Maya knowledge is viewed
as a storehouse of information on sustainable tropical resource management that is worthy of emulation.
In reality, however, contemporary Maya agriculture is not so easily
categorized. The Maya interact with their environment in a dynamic way
that does not always correspond to traditional prescription. As commercial
opportunities have arisen, Yucatec Maya farmers have adapted traditional
techniques to the market, and while some of these experiences have been
economically successful, their ecological sustainability over the long term
is questionable (Ewell, 1984; Humphries, 1989).

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91

Irrigated agriculture has transformed the traditional economy most

importantly in two areas of the state of Yucatan. Along the foot of the
Puuc Hills, located in the southern portion of the state, irrigated fruit and
vegetable farming has developed out of a process of agricultural intensification originating from Maya dooryard gardens (Ewell, 1984; Neugebauer,
1988). Vegetable production is generally an income-generating activity in
the period when the orchards are becoming established and while limited
shade from the young trees permits crop production. In the north of the
peninsula, however, irrigated vegetable growing has become a permanent
activity that has evolved out of shifting milpa agriculture (Humphries,
1989). These two instances of agricultural intensification have led to rising
incomes over the past 30-40 years among both groups of producers, and
have elevated their economic status well above the average for peasant
farmers in the peninsula. It has also resulted in a marked increase in wage
labor opportunities in both areas owing to the labor-intensity of activities.
Nevertheless, over the years, problems of pesticide use have become
apparent and vegetable producers, in particular, have become caught up
on the familiar "pesticide treadmill" involving higher doses of chemicals,
the destruction of pest predators and pest resistance, and finally pest resurgence.4 Recently, however, with the arrival in the peninsula of a new
aggressive biotype of whitefly, which vectors a large number of plant viruses
as well as inflicting damage directly on host plants, the process leading to
the development of pesticide resistance has been exceedingly rapid as producers have intensified pesticide applications in a vain attempt to deal with
the problem. The end result has been an explosion of the whitefly population and an increase in the incidence of plant disease which has led to
very heavy vegetable crop losses across the peninsula, and large numbers
of producers have been forced to the brink of bankruptcy.
Discussion of the experience of producers in one vegetable-growing
community, Dzidzantfin, the most important market gardening community
in northern Yucatan, 5 will serve to highlight some of the complexities of
4The use of pesticides among peasant farmers has been documented elsewhere. As Bentley
(1989) notes in the case of small Central American farmers, the tendency is to regard all
insects as enemies and to respond readily to the dramatic die-off induced by the chemicals
(see also Bentley and Andrews, 1991). The negative long-term environmental effects of
chemical pesticides are generally not known. And because pesticides are not well understood
by peasant farmers, there is a tendency to apply them as a preventive measure even when
disease symptoms are absent. In this regard, they are considered by farmers to be part of
the arsenal of risk reducing measures and higher and more frequent doses are seen as the
best defense against the risk of disease.
5According to estimates by the Secretaria de Agricultura y Recursos Hidrfiulicos (SARH),
Dzidzantfin produced between 22-25% of the state's tomatoes between 1979-1982. Over the
same period, the town was also a leading producer of green chile peppers (7% of the market),
cucumbers (11%), and watermelons (7-16%) (Desarrollo Dirigido Somex, 1985, pp. 171-172).

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Humphries

Fig. 1. Map of the YucatfinPeninsula showingthe location of Dzidzantfin (CIAT, unpublished map).

agricultural intensification and the importance of understanding the context

of agricultural decision-making for technology transfer (see Fig. 1).

THE DEVELOPMENT OF COMMERCIAL

H O R T I C U L T U ~ IN DZIDZANTIJN
The historical background of irrigated vegetable horticulture in
Dzidzant~n is not hard to discern: today's irrigated vegetable patch is still
called the milpa--the name given to the maize plot produced by traditional
slash and burn cultivation--although no maize is likely to be found there.
Discussions with informants in Dzidzantfm revealed the limited presence
of commercial vegetable production in the town at the end of the last century. While production at that time centered around the cultivation of dry
produce (mainly onions and tobacco) for transport to the state capital,
M6rida, the development of what became Yucatan's largest henequen ha-

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93

cienda on the outskirts of Dzidzantfin (Cisneros Canto, 1912), 6 provided a

stimulus for the cultivation of fresh vegetables by a few enterprising townsfolk at the beginning of this century.
The character of earlier production resembles what has been described as conuco agriculture in the literature on Yucatan (Ewell, 1984;
Neugebauer, 1988; Terfin, 1989; cf. Sauer, 1966). Conuco production, as it
is practiced in Yucatan, is an intensive milpa sequence comprising various
overlapping crop cycles on the same piece of land before this is taken out
of cultivation and returned to fallow. Early vegetable growers in Dzidzantfin
engaged in year-round production on a given piece of land by selecting
good water-retaining soils close to the coast, with a sinkhole nearby for
manual irrigation. Information gathered on early commercial growers
showed that five or six plantings, comprising vegetables and tobacco interspersed with maize, were common on a given piece of land over the typical
2-year milpa cycle.
The movement away from maize into the almost exclusive cultivation
of vegetable crops by the vast majority of Dzidzant6n's producers occurred
in the second half of this century. Factors responsible for this include the
improvement in road communications between Dzidzantfin and M6rida, allowing for easier marketing; the availability of small gasoline pumps for
irrigation; the introduction of commercial seeds, and latterly, high-yielding
varieties.
Given the geography of the area in the north of Yucatan where
Dzidzantfin is located, the change of crops undertaken by the town's peasant farmers represents a highly rational choice in economic terms. In the
northern littoral portion of the peninsula, exceedingly rocky terrain precludes the dense planting of crops; as a consequence yields of maize are
low. On the other hand, growers are blessed with flexible irrigation, since
the groundwater near the coast is close to the surface and can be easily
extracted with the aid of small mechanical pumps and hoses, either via a
hand-made well or via the large number of natural sink holes that dot the
northern karstic landscape. Producers in Dzidzantfn have maximized the
irrigable nature of the terrain and minimized the lack of soil by selecting
crops that generally require substantial irrigation and produce high yields
per plant. Hence, lower density planting may be compensated for by selecting crops that spread over a large area, such as cucurbits, or those that
6Hacienda San Francisco Manzanilla owned 7,750 has. of land in the early decades of this
century according to an undated map of the estate, making it the largesthenequen hacienda
in Yucatan (cf. Joseph, 1986,pp. 56-57). The residentpopulationat San FranciscoManzanilla
is estimated to have been between 800-1,200 in 1910-1912 (Cisneros Canto, 1912, p. 50).
Despite the sizable population, demand for food items was limited by the impoverished
condition of most hacienda residents.

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Humphries

produce a bushy structure such as high yielding tomatoes and regional chile
peppers. 7
The selection of certain vegetable crops has contributed to large increases in yields and, most importantly, in producer incomes. For example,
average yields of tomatoes in the recent past have been in the area of 30
tons per hectare, and watermelon output often reaches 25 tons per hectare; 8 meanwhile, maize yields rarely reach one ton per hectare, even with
irrigation. Moreover, crops whose fruit comes into contact with the ground
benefit from the rocky terrain, since rot is much less common. Fruit loss
through rot is also avoided by the lower rainfall levels in the area close to
the coast than elsewhere in the peninsula. These factors have contributed
to large increases in local incomes, notwithstanding the much higher production costs associated with commercial vegetable-growing over traditional
milpa-making. In other words the decision to adopt vegetable production
is a highly rational one in economic terms.
In environmental terms, however, the decision has proven less rational, at least as currently practiced. The intensification of milpa activities
has involved a reduction in fallowing and an increasing reliance on chemical
inputs. This process is especially marked in the town's irrigation units,
which were built on community land in recent decades to provide local
producers with access to plots with electricity for irrigation and feeder roads
for easy marketing. Even in the bush, however, where large numbers of
vegetable growers continue to work, the degree of itinerancy, characteristic
of traditional milpa agriculture, has been greatly reduced. One of the effects
of this general process has been an upsurge in insect populations and viral
plant disease.
The tendency to adopt a more sedentary form of agriculture cannot
be explained away on the basis of' population pressure (cf. Boserup, 1965)
since mature bushland within the town's commons 9 is available and production units belonging to the community's approximately 800 producers

7Chiles do not fit the generalization about the selection of crops requiring large amounts of
irrigation since they generally do best under drier conditions. Nevertheless, they can become
extremely bushy when grown at a new milpa site, and they have a long harvest period (up
to 6 months); therefore, yields per plant tend to be high.
8This figure for tomatoes is based on what is considered a good average, namely 1000-1250
boxes per hectare. Since a box of tomatoes may vary between 25-30 kg depending on the
type of tomato and how full the box is, the range of output is 25 tons to 37.5 tons/hectare.
Watermelon yield of 25 tons/hectare, which is the rule of thumb average cited by producers,
is in fact generally only obtained at a new milpa site, after cutting down mature bush.
9While access to the commons (ejido) is technically limited to the town's ejidatarios-individuals who acquired heritable usufruct rights to land after the Revolution--many
non-ejidatarios work there without confronting problems of entitlement. Ejidatario status,
however, has been more important in obtaining access to a plot in the irrigation units.

Agricultural Intensification

95

are on average very small. 1~ Instead, it is necessary to take into account

the logic of agricultural decision-making processes that have transformed
traditional milpa agriculture in Dzidzantfin.

DECISION-MAKING AMONG CONTEMPORARY

MILPEROS IN DZIDZANTIAN

Milpa agriculture involves felling a section of the bush and burning

it in order to mineralize the nutrients stored in the vegetation for fertilizing
future crops. And since higher 11 bush contains more nutrients than low
bush, it is more effective as a source of crop fertilizer. The burn also serves
to rid the soil of pests and seeds which compete with the crops for nutrients.
The burning of higher bush generates more heat than low bush, and hence
tends to be more effective as a means of pest control. Thus traditional
milperos have sought to maximize both fertility and pest control through
the search for high bush.
Felling more mature bush, however, is more onerous than felling low
bush. 12 For the traditional milpero the extra time required for this was almost inconsequential since felling was carried out while the current year's
maize crop was either maturing or drying in the milpa; the only real urgency
was to ensure the cut vegetation dried out sufficiently to be burnt before
the onset of the summer rains. Today felling usually involves considerable
haste, since most growers will have a crop in production and tree felling
is but one activity among several. Opportunity costs have changed, and by
selecting low bush, contemporary milperos have eased the burden of conflicting demands.
Transportation for the modern-day commercial milpero also presents
a very different problem than it does for the maize producer. Maize is

1~ a survey that I conducted in 1986 of 372 production units, which included close to half
of the town's producers, the average size of unit was between one-quarter to one-half
hectare.
nproducers in Dzidzantfin use the terms high and low bush (monte alto and monte bajo or
hubchd in Maya) rather loosely. High bush refers to bush fallows 15-20+ years, while
anything below 10 years, but mostly below 5 years, is categorized as tow bush. Monte crecido
(grown bush) is another commonly used, more intermediate term. It should also be pointed
out that these terms are relative to the bush type in which they occur. In the northern
littoral portion of the peninsula, the bush corresponds to Scrub Forest, and hence, is of
low general stature.
lXThe aridity of the northern littoral region promotes the development of extremely spiny
plants during forest succession which are very time-consuming to cut down; these diminish
as the level of rainfall increases toward the south and, in fact, in the south of the state the
reverse is true: high bush is easier to cut down than low bush.

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Humphries

traditionally left to dry on the stalk, and simply harvested and brought
home as the need arises. Transportation becomes a much more serious
issue when producers must deal with delicate, perishable produce, such
as tomatoes, which are harvested twice weekly. In this instance, location
is critical. Areas of bush that are close to roads and accessible from the
town are usually under regular use and therefore bush cover will be low;
a preference for higher bush involves going much further off the beaten
track.
When the decision is made to select bush far from an existing transport route, a swath will generally be cut to allow truck access. The work
required for this operation may not be justified if the producer is cultivating
vegetables only on a very small scale. Moreover, the transporter may not
be willing to go so far off the beaten track for a small amount of produce,
or, if he is, the unit cost to the producer will be prohibitively high. The
same argument can be made vis-a-vis the amount of time involved in traveling to and from the location if the producer only spends part of the day
there. The issue of distance is especially important if the small producer
combines self-employment with wage labor elsewhere.
Another key issue in decision-making is the availability of existing
wells or naturally-occurring sink holes for irrigation purposes. Making wells
in the rocky terrain of Yucatan requires capital as well as labor since they
must be blasted out of limestone with dynamite. While one well is sufficient
to irrigate one hectare, for the small producer with around one-quarter of
a hectare in production at a time, well-making represents a considerable
capital outlay, the cost of which must be amortized over a number of cycles
in order to recover the investment. For this reason, many small producers
without access to credit prefer to utilize a location in low bush with access
to an existing well or sink hole.
Thus, small-scale vegetable production tends to militate against milpamaking in more mature bush. And in Dzidzanttln, the tendency is to plant
vegetables on a rather small scale. This is a consequence of the high degree
of uncertainty inherent in market transactions stemming from price volatility in the perishable product market. This uncertainty encourages the
practice of staggered cropping, which reduces the scale of individual plantings at any given moment still further.
Price uncertainty is a product of a number of local factors, such as
high rates of perishability due to climate and lack of refrigeration, the
rather insular nature of Yucatan's market, transportation difficulties, and
the monopoly power of intermediaries, as well as factors associated with
involvement in larger national and international markets. While a strategy
of crop diversity presents a partial solution to price instability, and is
adopted by most producers to some degree, the market for the majority

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97

of locally-grown crops is a good deal narrower than for tomatoes. 13 Moreover apart from the high demand for tomatoes within Yucatan, locallygrown tomatoes gain easy entry to markets outside of the peninsula. This
helps to hold up prices during seasonal gluts. The ease with which tomatoes
enter into outside markets is not true of green chile peppers--Dzidzanttin's
second major crop. These are restricted to the Yucatan market because of
their extreme piquancy which is unpalatable to most Mexicans. This situation, coupled with the rather inelastic nature of local demand for chile,
leads to skyrocketing prices during periods of scarcity and the reverse during market gluts. Thus, for example, in May 1991, following the onset of
the summer rains, producer prices jumped from 50,000 pesos a box (12
kg) to 500,000 pesos within a few weeks, while retail prices went as high
as 50,000 pesos/kg or over 16 U.S. dollars/kg. Hence, green chile peppers
are a very high risk crop, and as a consequence, tomatoes have become
the predominant crop in Dzidzanttln.
Notwithstanding wide demand for tomatoes produced in Dzidzantfin,
the tomato market is far from stable. Production in Mexico is heavily concentrated in the northwestern part of the country in the state of Sinaloa,
and most of the output from this area is shipped across the border to the
United States and Canada. The remainder is sent south, and has a strong
impact on prices in the domestic market. Poor harvests in the northwest
caused by bad weather or pest problems, or a frost in Florida, which increases the demand for Mexican tomatoes north of the border, lead to
domestic shortages and rising tomato prices throughout Mexico. This creates windfall profits for domestic market producers, such as those in
Dzidzanttin. 14 By the same token, however, an increase in the quantity of
tomatoes on the domestic market caused by abundant harvests in the northwest and/or Florida, produces low tomato prices across Mexico.
Most peasant producers in Dzidzantfin seek to protect themselves
from price variation in the tomato market by planting in small batches every
few weeks or so. Staggered cropping serves to spread risk by distributing
output across a time frame that is longer than the normal harvest period.
This "safety-first" mechanism has the effect of limiting the rate of capital
accumulation since there is a tendency for gains to be balanced to some
degree by losses. Producers who plant at one time occasionally succeed in
making a very handsome profit; this can lead to the development of larger
13For example, in 1980, apparent demand for tomatoes in Yucatan was 14,415 tons/yr
compared to 7893 tons/yr for green peppers, 5536 tons/yr for watermelon, 2983 tons/yr for
papaya, 1956 tons/yr for baby squash, and 637 tons/yr for cucumber (Desarrollo Dirigido
Somex, 1985, p. 123).
14For example, in spring 1990, a frost in Florida pushed the price of a kilogram of tomatoes
in the Merida market to more than half the minimum daily urban wage.

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Humphries

units of production. But if this strategy fails, it can lead to bankruptcy, so

most vegetable growers play it safe and continue to spread their risk
through staggered production.
For reasons of scale, as discussed above, staggered cropping is not
compatible with the itinerancy inherent in the search for high bush. In addition, a milpa site that is not planted directly after the burn is rapidly
invaded by secondary forest growth. Thus producers engaging in staggered
cropping, which implies only partial initial planting at the site, also lose
part of the benefits of shifting cultivation. So labor input in slash-and-burn
agriculture represents a rather lumpy investment that is incompatible with
the staggered approach that depends on input divisibility.
Given the pressures to reduce the itinerancy in milpa agriculture,
many producers elected to abandon the bush in favor of a spot in one of
the community's recently constructed irrigation units, which are conveniently located close to the town and supplied with electrical hook-ups for
irrigation purposes. Moreover, by concentrating producers in smaller areas,
in periods of high output outside buyers have been encouraged to purchase
directly from producers at their places of work, thereby destroying the monopoly power of local intermediaries and raising farm-gate prices. In other
words, movement away from the bush into the irrigation units presents certain cost and price advantages to growers.
Nevertheless, the change of location has heightened the general tendency to rely on chemical inputs as substitutes for the natural fertility and
pest control functions of traditional milpa methods. Thus, while all producers now use a variety of chemical products for controlling pests and plant
disease, chemical usage is most marked in the irrigation units, where dosages tend to be a higher and more frequent. This tendency is particularly
evident when producers seek to cultivate tomatoes out of season, given the
greater danger of plant disease associated with almost continuous production and high humidity levels.
In summary, the tendency over the years, and particularly during the
1980s, has been in the direction of greater capital-intensity in agricultural
production. However, this has been achieved in concert with an emphasis
on capital divisibility as producers seek to protect themselves from price
uncertainty via a staggered, risk-spreading approach.

THE CURRENT CRISIS IN HORTICULTURAL PRODUCTION

Over the time that I conducted the bulk of my research in Dzidzanton, problems of insect resistance to pesticide usage were apparent. For
example, insecticides which producers considered to be effective at the out-

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99

set of my research were no longer considered to be so 2 years later. Because

producers have received virtually no technical support throughout the process of milpa transformation, decisions about what functions and what does
not are made on a trial-and-error basis by individual producers, and the
information garnered from the experience is rapidly diffused throughout
the town by word of mouth. In this way, there is a tendency for successful
practices and products to become uniform across the community in a rather
short time. For example, when the insecticide Lannate was effective against
whiteflies, most people in town used it; when it ceased to be effective, there
was a wholesale switch to a couple of insecticides formulated from synthetic
pyrethrum. With the arrival, in 1989, in the peninsula of a new, and more
aggressive biotype of whitefly, Poinsettia Whitefly,15 the development of a
tolerance to pyrethrum as well as to other insecticides was rapid and by
the summer of that year losses from viral disease had destroyed the vast
majority of local vegetable crops.
Dealing with the whitefly-viral problem is exceedingly difficult under
any circumstances 16 but it is particularly so when producers are working
on small plots contiguous to one another as many are in Dzidzantfin, as
well as in other communities across Yucatan (see Kiss, 1990). Control of
the problem is also complicated by the surrounding bush where there are
a large number of plants that serve as wild hosts to the different viruses.
Thus even if producers were to burn all their diseased plants, something
that is virtually impossible to coordinate among so many small growers,
the problem would persist.
The most common response to the whitefly-viral problem in Dzidzantfin has been to abandon the irrigation units and to head back into the
bush in search of isolation and more mature forest stands. Unfortunately,
after one crop at a site, the problem begins to manifest itself in the new
location. While most producers' capital has dwindled substantially over the
last few years and some have large debts to banks and local moneylenders,
growers continue to experiment in search of a solution. Belatedly, the government recognized the seriousness of the problem and aided producers
15Communication with L. Calvert, Virology Research Unit, CIAT, Colombia, regarding
whitefly identification. The recent arrival on the American continent of this new biotype of
Bemisia tabaci, from probably the Middle East or North Africa, poses a very serious problem
owing to the absence of natural predators in the Americas; hence the tremendous increase
in the whitefly population.
16Viral problems are now widespread across Mexico and affect most commercial vegetable-growing centers. A recent report by INIFAP, the national agricultural research
institute, estimated that 30% of the 73,000 ha of tomatoes cultivated in the years 1988 and
1989 were lost to viruses; estimated losses in green peppers over the same period are 40%
(Garzon Tiznado, 1990). Nevertheless, sanitary measures are easier to implement where
there are few producers working large extensions of land.

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Humphries

through demonstrations of improved agricultural techniques. However, the

use of integrated pest management, which is the most appropriate technique for dealing with the problem, 17 is information-intensive and would
require a substantial investment to train small producers in its use. Within
the current climate of government cutbacks this is unlikely to occur. This
points to a narrowing of the production base in favor of those producers
who do have access to the appropriate information and who can control
their immediate environment in a way that most small producers cannot.

CONCLUSIONS
The case study points to some of the difficulties involved in the adaptation of traditional technology to the market. Specifically, it shows how
and why sustainable traditional systems may break down and why individuals with a profound knowledge of their environment, in this case Maya
farmers, should find themselves making decisions which, over the long term,
lead to environmental degradation. Risk reduction and other decisions relating to integration into an exceedingly competitive market undermined
the integrity of the traditional system of agriculture.
The apparently nonsustainable nature of vegetable production in
northern Yucatan, under current technology, is lamentable. In contrast to
much of so-called economic development in tropical forest regions, which
results in very limited job creation and high rates of deforestation, most
obvious in the case of cattle ranching, vegetable production in Yucatan has
provided work to a substantial number of people and has raised local incomes above the regional norm without destroying the forest resources.
The study points to the difficulty of achieving the twin goal of economic and environmental sustainability and highlights some of the tradeoffs that must inevitably be confronted. Recent discussions dealing with
traditional technology and its transfer to small commercial farmers have
not always given sufficient weight to the economic side of the equation. If
the current interest in traditional resource management is to go beyond
description and translate into strategies that really provide for "sustainable
livelihood security," more attention must be paid to the real life activities
of producers and the implications of the market for traditional behavior.
A focus on decision-making and livelihood strategies provides a good point
of departure for this line of research.
17IPM requires that producers monitor plants for pest buildup and refrain from using
pesticides until certain thresholds are reached. However,the emphasis is on using a variety
of controls, such as cultural and biologicalones, and to minimizereliance on chemicals(see
Kiss, 1990).

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101

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I thank Louis Lefeber and Ricardo Grinspun from York University
for suggestions on this and earlier versions of the paper. Any errors are
mine alone. The author wrote this article while holding a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Center for Research on Latin America and the Caribbean
(CERLAC) at York University, Ontario, Canada, provided by the Social
Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. The Council also
supported research, reported in this article, carried out during a Doctoral
Fellowship. The author is currently Senior Research Fellow at the Centro
Internacional de Agricultura Tropical (C/AT) in Call, Colombia, employed
under the Rockefeller Social Science Fellowship Program in Agriculture.

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