Reorganization of Household Economies to Compensate the Reduction of Coffee Income in the Sierra Norte Region, Mexico

The households—in the Sierra Norte region of the State of Oaxaca, Mexico—have combined the self-consumption of staple crops (corn and beans) with the commercial production of coffee and sugarcane on a small scale. Until 2014 coffee income accounted for most of the household income budget and the following year the rust epidemic significantly reduced coffee production. In 2017, a considerable decrease in coffee income was detected, although the producer households continued investing in this crop, at the same time, they looked for complementary sources of income. Thus, households assigned more manpower to the labor markets, and invested in small businesses, including the productive chain of sugarcane. Migration stands out as a general strategy to increase the family budget. The decision analysis was carried by means of the household economics model (Reyes-Morales, Gijón-Cruz, & Cruz-Hernández, 2015). The databases of a probabilistic household survey applied in 2014 and 2017 were used to construct the model equations by ordinary least squares. This model allows distinguishing between the fraction of the household income contributing to household wellbeing and that fraction allocated for investment and savings.