Traditional knowledge and technologies in the small rural family farming of Mexico

Although Mesoamerican peoples invented agriculture more than seven thousand years ago, Mexico has made great efforts to have and modernize a single type of agriculture. In 1943, the Special Studies Office (OEE, Spanish acronym of Oficina de Estudios Especiales) was created in collaboration with the Rockefeller Foundation, where a system of generation and diffusion of agricultural technology later known as type “green revolution” was structured. Although the National Institute for Agricultural Research (INIA) was founded in 1960, technology continued to be generated focused on the use of industrial inputs, improved seeds and machinery. Analyzing the evolution of traditional rural family agriculture units, typical support for the sector and the generation and transfer of technology, it was found that these units have benefited little from government incentives for the use of industrial inputs and that generated technologies have been adopted very little in this sector of farmers. This study concluded that traditional technologies are more related to the technological background of the original Mexican peoples than to modern-western knowledge, and since it has allowed the persistence of many peoples for centuries, attention and support of this type of agriculture and the systematic study and recognition of traditional knowledge and technology for the integral development of Mexican agriculture become very important.