I dont think the government understands how desperate we are, said the 37-year-old farmer, who had planted three-quarters of his land with cane.

Vicente Fox took office calling himself a farmer-turned-president, but peasants across Mexico say his administration has pushed them aside in its rush to join the globalized economy.

Romantic remnants of post-revolutionary Mexico, family farms have been strained by plummeting agricultural prices and foreign produce pouring across a border thrown open by the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Past governments responded to trouble on the farm with heaping subsidies, loans and credit. Foxs administration, complaining of tight budgets, has doled out less.

Instead, the government has criticized farmers reliance on noncompetitive crops and charged that farms are leaving a trail of deforestation and polluted rivers.

Agricultural Minister Javier Usabiaga has even suggested that farmers find new ways to be more efficient or find a new line of work.

In response, peasants many of whom still work the fields using oxen, wooden water pumps and hoes have taken their case to the streets.

In early July, 5,000 sugar workers stormed Mexico City, blocking government offices and demanding more than $400 million in back pay from private sugar mills.

Nearly a month later, hundreds of sugar workers living in tents on sidewalks and traffic islands in Mexicos capital say mills have refused to pay them for their crops, arguing bankruptcy.

Corn farmers in northern Sinaloa state blocked gas stations earlier this month, demanding higher tariffs on U.S. and Canadian produce.

Rice farmers in Campeche state recently seized two cereal mills, and farmers in the border state of Chihuahua briefly closed a customs station last week, blocking U.S. produce from crossing the border.

The countryside is empty in Foxs mind, said Victor Suarez, executive director of the National Agricultural Producers Association. We are not part of the dynamic economy, and that is the only thing that interests him.

The son of a rancher, Fox used his cowboy-boot image to mount a campaign that unseated a ruling dynasty in power for 71 years.

But unlike his predecessors, Fox did not rely heavily on the support of a political machine that brought farmers to the polls in droves. Now in office, he does not feel the same pressure to keep farmers happy.

When a group of farmers in Baja California recently asked him for aid, Fox suggested they use technology to grow new crops, asking What are you doing to help yourselves?

The government is laughing at us, said Patricia Juarez, a 27-year-old sugar farmer who piled into a sedan with nine other farmers and rode to Mexico City from Veracruz state. We are not here asking for a raise. We are here asking for a fair wage for a years work.

Usabiaga says the sugar industrys problems are not the states fault and has suggested giving loans to sugar companies that may eventually go to pay workers salaries.

Fox has urged his chief agricultural adviser to take the blows and not give in to protesters demands.

Farmers say they have lived up to their end of the bargain.

Our president wants more production. The production was ready on time, said Mauricio Marcos, a 46-year-old sugar farmer who blocked a side entrance to the agricultural department in Mexico City this week. Theres no money to pay us for our work, and Fox schedules a trip to the United States to talk to foreign companies.

After the 1910 revolution, authorities carved up the countryside into small plots of land for subsistence farmers. For years, the state paid inflated prices for produce and doled out subsidies to keep small corn, rice, sugar and coffee farms afloat.

In recent years, federal subsidies have begun to dry up and the state has privatized produce companies. That process has continued under Fox.

Farmers say an unsympathetic government has forced thousands to head to the United States.

In the cane fields that ring Casa Sano, in sugar-dependent Morelos state south of Mexico City, Luisa Urbano said her boyfriend used to whisper that they would be married when the harvest wages came in.

Seven months later, theres no sign of the money and hes long gone.

He went to work in a belt factory in Texas, said Urbano, 21. How can you say stay and love me when theres no money?