Labour demand and Agroindustrial development: The evidence from Mexico

Agroindustrialisation, in contrast to assertions by Mexican policy‐makers, has had a negative employment‐generating effect in agriculture in the region known as El Bajío. The impact of widespread crop substitution and the wholesale transfer of technology promoted by transnational processing plants have both reduced the total labour employed and increased the instability of employment through heightened seasonality of labour demand. A decomposition analysis assesses the role played by various determinants of labour demand in the alteration of regional agricultural employment which has resulted from agro‐industrialisation.