For the first time in Mexico, exporting without social security will have consequences

For years, the organizations that accompany migrant agricultural workers in Mexico have brought the same hard-to-counter argument to the same set of tables: Mexican agriculture exports more than 50 billion dollars a year (Banxico, SIE CE122, 2024), is the world’s leading avocado supplier, and ranks among the seven top agroexporting powers globally (STPS, 2026), and yet most of those who make that figure possible reach the end of the season without having contributed a single day to IMSS. Recently, that argument arrived in Congress in the form of a legislative initiative. 

The proposal to create the Labor Certificate for Agro-Export (CLA), submitted by the Secretariat of Labor and Social Welfare to the Chamber of Deputies on April 20, is the institutional response to a demand that organizations, unions, alliances, and workers have built patiently and with data. Its existence is, in itself, evidence that collective work produces results, though there is still a long road ahead before it becomes a reality for all agricultural export products. 

The CLA and its operating platform, VELAGRO, are the product of a dialogue process involving the STPS, IMSS, the Secretariat of Economy, and SADER, one that drew on contributions from the productive sector and from organizations that document, from the field, what government records fail to capture. 

Since 2024, the organizations participating in PERIPLO have weighed in on the progress presented by the STPS, in various meetings, forums, and in the task force led by CIESAS-Jornamex, which also includes the private sector, academia, and unions. In each of these moments, the contribution was the same: bringing into the design of the mechanism the perspective of workers in movement, those who migrate between states and crops, those who sustain the chain from its most invisible link. 

That a reform of this scope has reached Congress reflects accumulated work that doesn’t make headlines. It’s worth naming, because that is how structural change works: slowly, and with many voices. 

The certificate would work as follows: those who export agricultural products (starting with avocado) submit their documentation, and the platform automatically validates their workforce’s IMSS registration for the production period. The factor linking tons harvested to formal IMSS employment is defined jointly by the productive sector, the STPS, IMSS, and SADER. In this way, exports become conditional on compliance. 

For agricultural workers, what this opens up is a new logic: labor compliance now carries consequences for the exporter’s business, not only for the inspector’s file. Today, of the 5.3 million people working in the fields, only 763,000, 12.8%, are registered with IMSS (ENOE, 2nd quarter 2025; IMSS administrative records). The proposal also includes a one-year pilot program to support the transition. 

The same need that PERIPLO has raised in dialogue spaces around this instrument remains, since VELAGRO operates on the agro-export chain. That means there is a portion of agricultural work, the part that supplies the domestic market, that takes place on smaller production units, that isn’t tied to export records, where the instrument doesn’t reach. For migrant agricultural workers, questions about how the platform captures the discontinuity of migrant labor also remain open. 

These are not reasons to qualify the progress: it is important to follow up on the secondary regulations. With the USMCA review on the horizon and export markets tightening their labor due diligence standards, Mexico arrives at that table with something concrete. It establishes a floor from which to build the understanding that the growth of the agricultural sector and the rights of those who work in it are not contradictory goals. 

At PERIPLO, we welcome this progress with a clear view of what lies ahead. And we continue to drive collaborative dialogue to find solutions that move forward on the stretch the certificate doesn’t cover, together with the organizations and workers who know it best. 

PERIPLO is a collaborative project led by Fundación Avina. It supports civil society organizations, companies, and government in building decent working conditions for migrant agricultural workers along value chains in the Mexico–United States corridor.