Animal production, food security, and poverty in an indigenous municipality in the state of Puebla, Mexico

Abstract

The objective of this article is to ascertain the changes in livestock production, food availability and consumption, and poverty levels over a decade in the municipality of Hueyapan, Puebla, Mexico. The information used, dated from 2010 and 2020, was obtained from official sources, including national censuses, the Servicio de Información Agroalimentaria y Pesquera (SIAP), the Consejo Nacional de Evaluación de la Política de Desarrollo Social (CONEVAL), and the Instituto Nacional de los Pueblos Indígenas (INPI), as well as from a survey previously conducted on 40 producers. From 2010 and 2020, poverty increased from 82.8% to 87.6%. It was found that per capita production in kilograms of bovines and ovines increased, from 0 to 1.28 and from 1.05 to 1.57, respectively. However, a reduction was observed in key food items such as poultry and pigs, decreasing from 8.7 to 7.77 and from 10.51 to 5.92, respectively. Despite this, there was virtually no change in the average number of animal units per capita between the two years compared. A gap was found between the municipality's annual per capita livestock production and the national average annual per capita consumption. This finding is consistent with the increase in poverty during the same period in the municipality of Hueyapan.