104 SOCIAL SCIENTK Growth rates 5Tof main a (pel Table 1 gricultural i • cent pex a pro< nmj iucts, 1 im) 96^ to 1976-8 Group 1 I (High) Group 2 W [edium) Group 3 (Low) Poultry Sorghum Safflower 12.7 10.6 9.5 Milk Cattle Wheat 4.0 3.7 3.3 Oranges Rice Coffee 2.2 1.7 1.4 Pigs Eggs Tomatoes 8.2 5.0 4.9 Maize Sugarcane -* Beans 0.7 0.3 1.5 Cotton -45 Source: Rodriguez ,1980. While sorghum (jawar, cholam) is a basic foodgrain for the peasants and rural workers of the Deccan plateau in India, it is not used as a human foodgrain but exclusively for preparing animal feed in Mexico. By 1984 sorghum occupied more than twice the area of wheat, the grain used in urban consumption. The rapid growth of sorghum output at over 10 per cent annually thus reflects a displacement of foodgrains by a feedgrain to meet the rapidly expanding demand for bovines and for meat of various kinds, the first for export to the US and the second for 'exports* domestically. Area under all forage crops and oilseeds (used in feed) has risen from 5.99 lakh ha. to over 32.5 lakh ha. during 1960 to 1975, much of it in the federal irrigated districts in northern Mexico (Sanderson, 1975). The TNCs like Ralston-Purina, Anderson Clayton and Ciba-Geigy control the forage crops and livestock sector of Mexico; they have spread the use of high yielding sorghum, while through the device of the producer contract, the demands of slaughter houses and feedmills in the US South-West determine the operation of Mexican capitalists engaged in growing forage and raising livestock in the border districts of Sonora, Chihuhua, and Tamaulipas. Mexico now accounts for over half of US imports of live bovines; the meat is mixed with fat and sold for direct consumption and used in the fast-food industry in the US. Thus a process of what Mexican economists call 'ganaderizacion' or production oriented to livestock at the expense of basic foodgrains, has been a very striking feature of the Mexican experience. The proportion of total grain produced which is fed to livestock rose from only 6 per cent to over 32 per cent between 1960 and 1980 while the proportion of cropland devoted to animal production rose from 5 per cent to over 23 per cent during this period. The losers from this process have been the peasants constituting over 80 per cent of all producers, whose staple products—maize, beans, chilli and rice—have shown a dismal performance except for the brief two-year period when SAM was in operation. Since profitable capitalist production for export'and 'exports', requiring substantial investment, could only be undertaken by