As part of the launch of the dialogue platform MESA Mexico, an international collaboration project that seeks to explore and understand the different perspectives on the present and future of agrifood systems, an on-site and virtual workshop was held to identify the main problems of Mexican food and agriculture. It is in this context that the results of the workshop are presented, with the intention of reflecting and deepening the discussion on the top three issues selected as the most important by the participants, in order to open the dialogue and debate on the most relevant issues of agrifood systems in Mexico.

At TABLE, we select annual themes to guide our work. These are usually concepts that act as fault lines in discussions of food system transformation, and concern what a ‘good’ food future might look like. Through a series of reports, essays, podcasts, events and explainers we consider the concept from many different angles. We hope that the totality of this work helps reveal the range of values, assumptions and evidence that shape stakeholders’ views and illuminates how and why they may disagree. TABLE’s report at the close of our SCALE theme noted that power was at the root of many concerns about localised or globalised food system approaches. Power is of course a too-big topic, encompassing not only its operation, mechanisms, handlers and impacts, but also what it is and how it is to be identified and redistributed. We approach the concept from multiple angles and via diverse modes of analysis to give a sense of its multifaceted nature. In a collection of 17 podcasts, TABLE asked contributors from a range of disciplines, professional backgrounds and ideological positions to tell us how they understand power and see its operations in their work. Our essays and blogs expanded on these and offer case studies and personal reflections. Our events gave contributors a chance to interact: An open discussion on power asked how participants see power fitting into conversation, while in Whose knowledge counts speakers asked how power might determine what we take as evidence. Lastly, we considered TABLE’s own experience of power in Process and Power at TABLE. Power can be a slippery concept to evaluate and discuss. To give it some materiality, we took protein as a case study, exploring how power has maintained this ‘charismatic nutrient’ at the centre of ideas about nutrition, development and farming. TABLE’s reports add a historical lens to consider how power has structured cultural understandings of protein when it comes to funding, research and international development strategies and activities in Primed for Power: a short cultural history of protein. The Investment, Power and Protein in Sub Saharan Africa report examined financial investment in protein production in sub-Saharan Africa, reflecting on how those cultural narratives are still informing resource distribution. You can explore all the Power materials on the project page. However, this theme is not hard-edged and many other resources on TABLE deal with questions of power. You can also explore our other themes of SCALE and NATURE, and the MEAT: the Four Futures project.https://www.doi.org/10.56661/d98edcaf