Mules Also Eat Corn: Food Production, Trade, and Hunger in New Spain, 1750–1810

In 1785-86 and 1806-9, the population in Central Mexico experienced acute episodes of generalized famine. In these years, some districts may have seen fifteen percent of their population die, and migrations created displacement and misery for years to come. In this paper, I provide estimates of food production and supply in order to evaluate the aggregate availability of food. This functions as a test of the proposition that New Spain was experiencing some sort of Malthusian crisis, in which production fell short of meeting the demand of a growing population. I find evidence that productivity declined at least in a critical bread-basket region and the risk to climatic disasters increased, but at the same time production was, on average, sufficient to adequately feed the needs of the population in producing districts. However, this balance does not take into account that the output from harvests is not the same as the food available for local human consumption. Exports to consumer districts and the use of grain as animal feed effectively removed from local use a significant portion of production and reduced food supply to subsistence levels. A decline in productivity and higher climatic risk contributed to the subsistence crisis, but it was primarily the allocation and transfer of resources played a central role in shaping the food crisis.