40 SOCIAL SCIENTIST Harper and Row, Perennial Library, 1973) and which is supposed to avoid the catastrophic consequences of modern technology transfers, is a false issue. See Urs Mueller-Plantenberg's excellent Tecknologie and Abhaengigeit, in Dieter Senghaas, Imperialismus and Strakturelle Gewalt, Suhrkamp, 1972; and my The New Penetration .. op.cit^. MueIler-Plantenberg demonstrates why for economic reasons manufacturers are not interested in producing "intermediate technology" and I have tried to show that all technologies require an adjustment of the socio-economic structure and not the other way round, as the Schumacher school simplemindedly implies. 5l> Increased control by foreign capital and technology over a country's most important agricultural sectors also implies an indirect control over the remainder of agriculture as backwash effects of the control of inputs and outputs. 56 Mexico is of course not an isolated case. See Helena Tuomi» "On Food Imports and Neocolonialism", in Vilho Harle (ed) Political Economy of Food, Proceedings of the International Seminar, Tampere Peace Research Institute, Research Report No 12, Finland 1976 (soon to be published by Teakfield Ltd, England). In this context, it is interesting that the end of the period of Mexico's record rates of growth in agricultural output occurred at a time when US agribusiness activities and US capital and technology transfers rose sharply in all of Mexico's commodity systems. This is surely no coincidence. 57 J David Morrissy, Agricultural Modernization through Production Contracting, Praeger, 1974,p 44, ^ My El Imperialismo Fresa, op. cit is an illustration of the chaos introduced by foreign capital in Mexican agriculture. 59 For a typical example, see James F Austin, Agribusiness in Latin America, Praeger 1974 pp 14 ff. Without intending to do so, this author demonstrates the disadvantages of the system for underdeveloped countries by the various examples he describes of foreign investments in Latin America. 60 A recent study of the operations of Nestle in Mexico shows that this firm makes as much or more money selling Holstcin cows (totally unsuitable to tropical conditions) to ejidos and then recuperating them when the ejidos are in'financial difficulties, only to resell them again to other ejido sor rancfasers. 61 It is argued that an underdeveloped country is better off exporting- high* value agricultural commodities and importing grain for domestic consumption with the foreign exchange earned from the exports. This argument is corredt only if one ignores the conditions under which those transactions arc -carried out in a foreign agribusiness dominated world since a considerable percentage of the foreign exchange earnings are profits repatriated by agribusiness. In the end, the local economy is no better off than before and may even be worse off. 62 Mexico exported wheat for several years in the face of an increasingly poor national diet. ^ For example tenants and sharecroppers (or ejidatariov) are evicted. <>4 Exaggerated claims have a political content: they are made to convince the public that foreign investments are beneficial in terms of jobs and (for Mexico) reduce the problems associated with the migration of Mexican workers to the US. 6r> El Cultive de la Fresa en Mexico, Inst Nacional de Investigaciones Agricolas, SAG, folleto de divulgacion No 48, February 1973, p 4. 66 For details see El imperialismo Fresa, op. cit., and my "Agribusiness and the Elimination of Latin America's Rural Proletariat," World Development, Vol 5 No 5/6, England 1977. 67 Whether the production of meat represents an economic use of agricultural resources under conditions of •underdevelopment (or perhaps anywhere) is highly debatable, but the question will remain unanswered here. 68 There exist in Mexico and elsewhere a few intensive cattle operations (feed lots). Unless they are dedicated to the production of high-quality meat for a limited clientele (tourists) they are operated usually by rich adventurous investors at financial (tax deductible) losses and their life expectancy is low. To feed cattle with locally