Rethinking Food Security in Mexico: Discussing the Need for Sustainable Transversal Policies Linking Food Production and Food Consumption

Abstract

Two of the biggest challenges of humanity are to achieve global food security by reducing environmental impacts, and provide healthy diets for all people. In this paper, we discuss the complexity involved in designing solutions on food security. We focus on Mexico due to the heterogeneity of the country in relation to socioeconomic, cultural and ecological factors. First, we discuss the need to analyze food security by integrating the sustainability of both food production and food consumption. Then we describe the Mexican situation by analyzing five food production-consumption systems that illustrate the diversity of agricultural systems and dietary patterns. This analysis reveals that the pathway to achieve food security in Mexico should include sustainable food production systems and dietary patterns. The solution should be site-specific considering the ecological, socioeconomic and cultural situation, so an integrative geographical perspective is needed with a bottom-up approach; in this way, food security for future generation will not be compromised. To reach this, transversal policies involving the agricultural, health, environmental and federal agencies are required.