Abstract
This article examines the case of the Mexican 'tortilla crisis' of 2007. Drawing on reviews of literature and the media, key-informant interviews, and secondary databases, the authors explore the response of the Mexican maize - tortilla chain to a price shock. Price increases should theoretically be passed on to the consumer as a progressively less significant percentage of the overall price of value-added food products. However, in Mexico, price increases were magnified along the maize - tortilla production chain. This was due largely to asymmetries among segments of the chain, which conditioned the responses of industrial-scale corporations and small-scale family businesses. This case study suggests that, in order to understand the impacts of price-shocks on poor consumers, more detailed, country-level analyses of market chains and price-ransmission structures are needed.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 550-565 |
Number of pages | 16 |
Journal | Development in Practice |
Volume | 21 |
Issue number | 4-5 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Jun 2011 |
Externally published | Yes |
Keywords
- Globalisation
- Labour and livelihoods
- Latin america and the caribbean
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Geography, Planning and Development
- Development