MEXICO CITY (AP) -- Sitting in a Mexico City office, dressed in a pressed white shirt, Gerardo Sanchez seems a world away from his herds of goats and fields of beans.But he's no poster boy for the new world agricultural order, in which peasants are supposed to leave their unproductive farms and strive for middle-class prosperity while food production is left to agribusiness in the countries that farm most cheaply and efficiently.
Sanchez works for the National Campesino Federation, a lobbying group for small farmers that has been active lately in protests against the rising price of food, notably a doubling of the price of tortillas. Here, NAFTA and globalization are dirty words.
Around the world, governments are trying every play in their books to stave off food riots -- sending troops to hand out food in slums, ordering sweeping wage increases, banning grain exports and suspending futures trading. The United States is promising millions in emergency food aid.
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