SDG 1 – No Poverty

• Target 1.1: By 2030, eradicate extreme poverty for all people everywhere, currently measured as people living on less than $1.25 a day.
• Target 1.2: By 2030, reduce at least by half the proportion of men, women and children of all ages living in poverty in all its dimensions according to national definitions.
• Target 1.3: Implement nationally appropriate social protection systems and measures for all, including floors, and by 2030 achieve substantial coverage of the poor and the vulnerable.
• Target 1.4: By 2030, ensure that all men and women, in particular the poor and the vulnerable, have equal rights to economic resources, as well as access to basic services, ownership and control over land and other forms of property, inheritance, natural resources, appropriate new technology and financial services, including microfinance.
• Target 1.5: By 2030, build the resilience of the poor and those in vulnerable situations and reduce their exposure and vulnerability to climate-related extreme events and other economic, social and environmental shocks and disasters.

SDG 2 – Zero Hunger

• Target 2.1: By 2030, end hunger and ensure access by all people, in particular the poor and people in vulnerable situations, including infants, to safe, nutritious and sufficient food all year round.
• Target 2.3: By 2030, double the agricultural productivity and incomes of small-scale food producers, in particular women, indigenous peoples, family farmers, pastoralists and fishers, including through secure and equal access to land, other productive resources and inputs, knowledge, financial services, markets and opportunities for value addition and non-farm employment.
• Target 2.4: By 2030, ensure sustainable food production systems and implement resilient agricultural practices that increase productivity and production, that help maintain ecosystems, that strengthen capacity for adaptation to climate change, extreme weather, drought, flooding and other disasters and that progressively improve land and soil quality.

SDG 5 – Gender Equality

• Target 5.5: Ensure women’s full and effective participation and equal opportunities for leadership at all levels of decision-making in political, economic and public life.

SDG 10 – Reduced Inequalities

• Target 10.2: By 2030, empower and promote the social, economic and political inclusion of all, irrespective of age, sex, disability, race, ethnicity, origin, religion or economic or other status.

Tiendas Bienestar form part of Mexico’s food supply policy, coordinated by the state-owned enterprise Alimentación para el Bienestar S.A. de C.V., established in 2025 through the merger of SEGALMEX (Mexican Food Security Agency) and DICONSA (Distributor and Commercial Development Agency of the National Popular Subsistence Company).

The programme traces its origins to the Rural Supply Programme (Programa de Abasto Rural, PAR), created in 1979 to establish community stores in localities facing high and very high levels of marginalization and lacking adequate access to food retail services. This reflects more than four decades of institutional continuity. The intervention represents a model of direct state involvement in the organization of the food system, linking production, procurement, and distribution stages.

The enterprise purchases agricultural products from small-scale producers living in socially marginalized localities and transforms these products into high-quality, nutritious, healthy, and sustainable foods marketed through the Tiendas Bienestar network. It also coordinates the storage and distribution logistics for basic and complementary goods supplied to the network of community-operated and community-managed stores. In doing so, it seeks to ensure that the prices of products included in the Food Basket for Wellbeing (Canasta Básica de Alimentación para el Bienestar) are at least 15% lower than those available through alternative local retail outlets.

Implemented through the Tiendas Bienestar network and managed by Alimentación para el Bienestar S.A. de C.V., the Rural Supply Programme aims to contribute to the effective realization of the social right to food among populations living in localities experiencing food access deprivation. At the same time, it seeks to promote the production of staple foods and support the development of Mexico’s agricultural sector.

The programme is structured around five components:

1. Distribution of Basic and Complementary Products: implemented through the Tiendas Bienestar network.
2. Enchula tu Tienda (“Beautify Your Store”): supports the maintenance, rehabilitation, and upgrading of community-operated stores.
3. Maíz para Todos (Maize for All): provides subsidized maize supplies to tortilla producers in 3,500 Indigenous and Afro-Mexican localities across 13 states.
4. Transformación para el Bienestar (Transformation for Wellbeing): facilitates the direct procurement of coffee, cocoa, honey, cinnamon, herbs, and hibiscus flowers from small-scale producers at guaranteed minimum prices per kilogram.
5. Comaleras para el Bienestar (Women Tortilla-Makers for Wellbeing): targets women producers of native maize in the states of Mexico, Puebla, and Tlaxcala.

The instrument is grounded in the right to adequate and nutritious food enshrined in the Mexican Constitution and in the State’s responsibility to ensure the sufficient and timely provision of basic foodstuffs.

To operationalize these objectives, the company’s Social Statute (Clause Three) defines its corporate purpose as contributing to the country’s economic development and to food self-sufficiency and food security through the procurement, storage, supply, processing, and commercialization of basic and complementary food products, with a particular focus on serving populations living in poverty and extreme poverty.

The Programme Operating Rules for fiscal year 2026 further specify the operational arrangements. They establish that support is delivered through the Tiendas Bienestar network, which offers products included in the basic food basket at prices that provide consumers with savings of at least 15% compared with prevailing prices in local markets.

Beyond improving access to affordable food, the programme seeks to strengthen domestic production and food sovereignty by prioritizing purchases from small-scale producers, particularly those located in areas with predominantly Indigenous and Afro-Mexican populations. The programme also promotes local food processing through direct procurement from small producers, thereby adding value to local production while supplying the Tiendas Bienestar network.

To effectively reach poor and vulnerable populations, the programme applies objective and verifiable territorial eligibility criteria, including:

• Localities with more than 200 inhabitants experiencing food access deprivation, comprising a target universe of 38,783 localities across the country.
• Localities with no accessible alternative source of food supply and characterized by high or very high levels of marginalization or social lag.
• Localities with a predominantly Indigenous population, as identified in the National Catalogue of Indigenous and Afro-Mexican Peoples and Communities maintained by the National Institute of Indigenous Peoples (INPI).

More than four decades of implementation of the Rural Supply Programme, delivered today through the Tiendas Bienestar network, offer lessons for countries seeking to guarantee access to affordable food in remote and marginalised localities:

• Entrust store management to community structures: Community-based management through assemblies and local committees, with unpaid positions and mechanisms for social and gender accountability, strengthens outreach, local ownership and oversight of resource use.
• Use a public brand to link consumers with smallholder producers: The programme’s “Bienestar” private label reinforces its identity and strengthens linkages with smallholder and family farming. Historical evaluations found that the private-label strategy widened the price differential in favour of programme stores; this effect could be reassessed in the current context, taking into account food quality (including NOVA food classification criteria), the composition of the food basket and the conditions governing public procurement and sourcing.
• Build a dedicated logistics chain where private markets are absent: An integrated chain of central warehouses, rural warehouses and community stores, with each rural warehouse supplying an average of 100 stores on a weekly or fortnightly basis, enables service delivery in remote localities where private retail markets are absent or limited.
• Give the programme a traceable legal basis: The programme’s institutional origins stem from a sequence of administrative and corporate reorganisations involving CONASUPO, DICONSA/SEGALMEX and, more recently, Alimentación para el Bienestar, rather than from a single founding legal act. This can complicate the legal and institutional traceability of the intervention over time.
• Invest in digital field records: Field records remain largely paper-based, highlighting the need for further investment in digitalisation and information management systems.

Institutional markets, including public procurement and pro-poor food pricing; Inclusive value addition and processing; Promote inclusive access to agricultural markets; Promotion and access to healthy diets, including through education and affordable/subsidized prices

In Mexico:

• National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM)
• Ministry of Welfare

International:

• Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)
• University of Brasília (UnB)

Multi-sectoral, decentralized, and characterized by strong community participation

The policy is implemented by Alimentación para el Bienestar, a state-owned enterprise responsible for executing food security policies within the framework of Mexico’s Federal Public Administration Organic Law, Planning Law, and Sustainable Rural Development Law.

The Programme Operating Rules, issued annually, establish the programme’s eligibility criteria, procurement procedures, and oversight and control mechanisms.

Programme implementation is decentralized and territorially based. Central warehouses supply rural warehouses, which in turn provide goods to an average of 100 community stores on a weekly or biweekly basis.

Governance is community-driven. Stores are established through community assemblies, which play a central role in local management and oversight. According to the 2026 Programme Operating Rules, each Supply Committee (Comité de Abasto) is composed of a Chairperson, Secretary, Treasurer, and a Gender Representative. Female participation is institutionally mandated, with women required to hold at least 50% of the positions on both the Supply Committees and the governing boards of the Community Supply Councils (Consejos Comunitarios de Abasto), thereby embedding gender equality considerations into programme governance and contributing to SDG 5 (Gender Equality).

In practice, women currently manage 66% of Tiendas Bienestar stores, demonstrating a significant level of female leadership within the programme. In addition, newer product lines seek to promote and revalue Indigenous and native agricultural production, including coffee and cocoa from the Yucatán Peninsula and initiatives supporting the preservation and commercialization of native maize varieties.

It is worth noting that the Store Manager does not have an employment relationship with Alimentación para el Bienestar. To safeguard the programme’s integrity, the Operating Rules establish formal Electoral Safeguarding (“Blindaje Electoral”) provisions and explicit sanctions, including the closure of stores, in cases involving misuse of resources or the use of Tiendas Bienestar for political or electoral purposes.

The Tiendas Bienestar network operates in 2,303 municipalities, covering more than 92% of the national territory, and reaches over 23,000 localities, whose combined population, approximately 70 million people across Mexico, is counted by the programme as its beneficiaries, reflecting access to a store rather than actual purchases.

As of the end of the second quarter of 2026, the network comprised 26,939 operational stores, of which 17,814 (66%) were managed by women. According to the 2026 Programme Operating Rules, the target population of the Basic and Complementary Products Distribution Component encompasses 38,783 localities nationwide.

In 2024, the Rural Supply Programme (Programa de Abasto Rural) received MXN 2.466 billion in fiscal resources. Together with MXN 11.824 billion in own-source revenues generated through sales to Tiendas Bienestar, these funds were used to procure goods for commercialization and to ensure the effective operation of the programme in the communities served by the 24,604 Tiendas Bienestar stores then in operation. As a result, the programme-maintained service delivery across its nationwide network, achieving average annual sales of MXN 480,600 per store.

The programme relies on an information management system known as SIAC (Integrated Community Warehouses System), which records the operations of both warehouses and Tiendas Bienestar stores. As specified in the 2026 Programme Operating Rules, SIAC is also used to certify stores opened during the 2025-2026 period.

In addition, the Results Indicator Matrix (Matriz de Indicadores para Resultados, MIR) 2024, which serves as the programme’s planning and monitoring framework rather than an information system itself, identifies SIAC as the official means of verification for three key performance indicators: coverage of target localities (C1.1), achievement of store opening targets (A1), and completion of operational supervision activities, the latter being cross-referenced with the Electronic Supervision Log (Bitácora Electrónica de Supervisión, BES) (A5).

The programme also operates the Community Participation Module (Módulo de Participación Comunitaria, MOPAC), which tracks training and capacity-building activities delivered to members of the programme’s social network, including store managers, Supply Committees (Comités de Abasto), and Community Supply Councils (Consejos Comunitarios de Abasto).

https://www.gob.mx/alimentacionparaelbienestar