Agroecology and the Struggle for Food Sovereignty ... - Yale University

farming, forests, and biodiversity
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Tuxill cited several examples of farmer preferences supporting biodiversity and a
high quality of life. For instance, to be able to make the authentic version of relleno
negro, a favorite festival dish, farmers need to have blue corn on hand. Many farmers
prefer to eat local landraces of corn instead of the corn used in the prepackaged flour
commonly sold in supermarkets and stores. This is as much a matter of taste as it is
a practical preference. Growing one’s own corn guards against famine when markets
for cash crops fail.
Tuxill explained that the Yucatán is undergoing changes due to shifting labor markets.
Many younger rural residents now work in Cancún, diverting labor from the
milpa and indirectly reducing the patterns of diversity that farmers maintain in their
fields and garden groves. Nevertheless, he said, culturally rooted farming practices
have staying power even as agricultural regions undergo pronounced change.
Therefore, despite the significant impacts that economic and cultural globalization
are having in the Yucatán, Tuxill finds reason to be hopeful that farming practices that
promote agro-biodiversity can be maintained. He noted several exceptions to the
trend of young farmers cultivating less diverse farms – explaining that they were due
to the benefits agro-biodiverse systems provide families. Tuxill predicted that the
Mayan agricultural systems would continue to evolve as a hybrid of the new and the
traditional.
Combining Traditional and Alternative Agriculture
Ronaldo Lec, the founder of Asociación Ija’tz (“Seed”) in San Luis Tolimán,
Guatemala, described the integration of traditional Maya agriculture practices and
permaculture. The Maya and other nearby cultures have a rich agricultural history,
which includes the domestication of maize, chilies, avocadoes, tomatoes, cocoa, and
cotton. The diversity and sophistication of Mayan agriculture, Lec explained, encouraged
the co-development of a number of cultural and scientific advancements that
remain today. For instance, weavings of native fibers and rain ceremonies tied to
water conservation are still practiced. Permaculture-inspired agricultural terraces
stand alongside pre-colonial terraces. However, these terraces are eroding, which is
symptomatic, suggests Lec, of how economic and cultural globalization is eroding
traditional knowledge in the Guatemalan highlands.
Lec explained how products and byproducts from the market system, such as pesticides,
herbicides, coffee plantations, and land tenure instability, all challenge biodiversity,
food security, and sustainable agriculture goals. Through his organization, Lec
works to mitigate these challenges and to balance the new with the old for food security
and biodiversity. The global demand for coffee squeezed traditional farming out
of the uplands. Farmers working with Lec’s group decided to explore methods for
growing crops in the moist bottomlands of the region, where coffee cannot grow. Lec
is experimenting with a Maya water management technique still employed in the
Xochimilco district of Mexico City – the chinampa, which is a series of canals that
drain water in the wet season and self-irrigate in the dry season.
Lec described the trial-and-error process and lessons learned during these experiments.
The farmers began by planting in a low part of town. In the rainy season, up
John Tuxill. Photographer:
Steve Taylor.
“Agro-biodiversity represents a
key resource for Maya farm
households. Yet it’s a resource
that’s commonly undervalued
in terms of how we measure
agricultural productivity and
the benefits that agriculture
produces.”
“The most important question
is: is that agrodiversity helping
[farmers] to meet their own
expectations about what is a
high quality of life?”
“Agro-biodiversity is a multidimensional
resource at the
household level – benefits that
are not easy to categorize from
a narrow economic perspective.”
– John Tuxill
yale school of forestry & environmental studies