Implementation Of The Protected Designations Of Origin In Traditional Products In Mexico As a Tool To Potentiate Rural Development.

Implementation of the Protected Designations of Origin in Traditional Products in Mexico as a Tool to Potentiate Rural Development.

Roberto Montemayor
IPL Summer School
ISARA Lyon

Introduction

Nowadays, Designations of Origin in Mexico have not brought a considerable amount of benefits to small farmers of producers. There are several factors that have not permitted small scaleproductions to be posible, in fact, large scale productions are the ones that have been favored by the Official Mexican Standard by allowing only few species. Therefore, it has resulted in genetic erosion and no recognition in the traditional and regional processes.

The main objective of this work is to find the potential in different products in Mexico that should be ‘differentiated’ in order topotentiate rural development by taking into account different regions of production and the wide variety of know-how’s that are spread all over the country.

In the current context, in a world undergoing very fast and with profound changes process, it is not a coincidence that emphasizes the pursuit of certain types of foods that symbolize belonging to a place, a society, a way of life. Thesechanges and trends have to be harnessed to prevent the disappearance of the traditional processes and for potentiate the rural development.

What is to be achieved would be shortening the distance between local producers and urban consumers, as well as a positive revaluation of their products. This could be done with public policy strategies related to the sector and changing the criteria forestablishing official Mexican standards, so that within its statutes to include not only geographical delimitations, but also extend to the various cultivars that are employed amongst the different regions and the different know-how’s.

Background of the designations of origin on Mexico

The history of the designations of origin in Mexico started with the signing of the Lisbon Agreement on 1958.Mexico was one of the six signatory countries.

The first law in the country that protected the designation of origin of Tequila was issued in 1972. This law, mentioned five states as Tequila producers, Nayarit, Jalisco, Michoacan, Guanajuato and Tamaulipas.

The designation of origin for Tequila does not specify in its statutes the techniques and sources of sugars that undoubtedly influencethe quality of the final product. Its worth to be mentioned that in the cooking, there are traditional and modern methods, and that there are no restrictions regarding the origin of sugar to mix and on the distillation.

Before starting to talk about the various regional products that have the right characteristics to have a designation of origin, some data will be presented. This data representa very strong reason, that among others, explain why designation of origin should be issued in Mexico for several products.

For 25 years, from 1940 to 1965, Mexico's agricultural production grew at an annual rate of 7%, but in the last 30 years, growth averaged just 1.8%, compared to a population growth of 2.7%. Moreover, in the last 10 years it suffered a stagnating situation that led todecreases of 0.8% in per capita availability of food. That is, agricultural growth was lower than the population growth.

An important characteristic of the Mexican agricultural sector is the high concentration of poverty. More than two thirds of the extremely poor in Mexico are rural inhabitants.

One feature about Mexico’s agricultural sector is that it has low productivity. 27% of the nationalpopulation lives in that sector, 22% of the people who have a job in Mexico work there, but it only produces 7% of the gross domestic product.

Mexico’s agricultural sector has a productivity close to one third of national prodctivity average. This is because among other reasons, it has suffered from a severe disinvestment and deterioration of its profitability and because of that has been...