About the time ADRIAN DE LEON-ARIAS was finishing his PhD in economics at Notre Dame, both sides of the US-Mexico border were anxious about the impact of the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

On the US side, many feared that manufacturing jobs would flood into Mexico; less well known were the fears of Mexico's rural agricultural producers who felt wholly unprepared for the new free trade zone.

Nearly 12 years after first arriving at Notre Dame, de Leon-Arias has been putting his expertise with the "dismal science" to work through an extraordinary partnership that promises to help rural Mexican farmers compete in the market place.

Known as US-Mexico Training, Internships, Exchanges, and Scholarships (TIES), this project brings together the Kellogg Institute, Notre Dame's Mendoza College of Business, and the Universidad de Guadalajara, where de Leon-Arias is the dean of the school's college of business.

As part of the TIES project, faculty from the Universidad de Guadalajara spend time as guest scholars at the Kellogg Institute, and Notre Dame faculty teach modules to MBA students in Guadalajara. Notre Dame MBA students and selected undergraduate students sponsored by the Kellogg Institute also join their Mexican counterparts in summer internships to develop business plans and provide consulting services to small and medium-sized agricultural producers in the Mexican states of Jalisco and Michoacán.

During the 2005-06 academic year, de Leon-Arias returned to Notre Dame as guest scholar at the Kellogg Institute along with his wife, AIDA SERGOVIA, a professor of Universidad de Guadalajara, who also works on TIES.

"Mexican producers need help in areas such as production, prices, international trade, productivity and social aid programs," said de Leon-Arias. "But, above all, they need to develop entrepreneurial skills to enter global markets.

"The student interns have helped Mexican producers streamline operations and explore global markets for avocados and limes, among other specialty crops," said de Leon-Arias "With this small-scale program, we surely cannot solve all the problems in Mexican agriculture.

"But by searching for new methods and approaches and identifying better tools and practices, we can help individual producers in rural Mexico develop needed entrepreneurial skills."

Supported by a three-year grant from the United States Agency for International Development, the Notre Dame-Universidad de Guadalajara TIES project is co-directed by de Leon-Arias, Kellogg Faculty Fellow JUAN RIVERA, and Kellogg Associate Director SHARON SCHIERLING.