The social vulnerability of irrigated vegetable farming households in Central Puebla

Irrigation development has been frequently mentioned in the climate change literature as a possible means for vulnerable agricultural populations to adapt to climatic variability and climatic change. In facilitating year-round intensive production, irrigation can also enable farmers access to competitive commercial markets. In Mexico, the production of irrigated vegetables has expanded over the past decades as a response to both new commercial opportunities and the climatic limitations of rainfed production. The case study presented here illustrates that for some smallholders, irrigated vegetable production does not, in itself, necessarily address farmers' sensitivity to climatic hazards. Furthermore, the interaction of market uncertainty and price volatility with climatic risk in some cases may actually exacerbate the vulnerability of these households.