Climate change and the transgenic adaptation strategy: Smallholder livelihoods, climate justice, and maize landraces in Mexico

► We examine climate adaptation strategies in crop centers of origin, focusing on maize in Mexico. ► We analyze three likely responses by maize farmers to climate change. ► Transgenic crops engineered with traits to combat climate change may not provide sufficient benefits to be prioritized over adaptation strategies using farmers’ landraces. ► Adaptation strategies should be agroecologically informed to take advantage of the ways that diverse crop resources can be maintained by farmers. Climate change will affect agricultural production by subsistence farms in crop centers of origin, where landraces are conserved in situ. Various strategies for adaptation to climate change have been proposed. In this paper we examine the prospects of what we call the ‘transgenic adaptation strategy’, i.e. the appeal to use transgenic seeds to adapt to climate change, through the lens of smallholder maize farming in Mexico. Landraces are the bedrock of maize production in Mexico. We consider how maize farmers may respond to climate change and the effects of those responses on crop diversity. In this paper, we argue that the promotion of the transgenic adaptation strategy is problematic for biological and social reasons. Smallholder livelihoods in southern Mexico could suffer a disproportionate negative impact if transgenic technology is privileged as a response to climate change. Agroecological and evolutionary approaches to addressing the effects of climate change on smallholder agriculture provides an alternative adaptive strategy.