Abstract
In the face of crises caused by extreme climatic shocks, and sociocultural and political processes, food security continues to be a challenge. Mainstream approaches focussing on crop productivity and high-yielding technologies continue to be promoted worldwide and they are partially the root cause of the climate and food crisis. However, there are other alternative food systems, i.e. Indigenous Peoples’ food systems, that could offer alternatives to the current crisis and from which we could learn to make more resilient communities. Despite the fact that Indigenous Peoples’ food systems, such as native seeds-based food systems, are still widespread, they remain underestimated by mainstream policies and agricultural research. In this paper, we explore how Indigenous Peoples innovate and play with different elements to make resilient food systems to adapt to a changing world while also keeping elements that are relevant to their self-determination and culture. We argue that it is possible to create resilient communities by reinforcing Indigenous Peoples’ food systems rather than displacing or replacing them. This paper describes a case study grounded in the Zapotecan Indigenous community in Oaxaca, Mexico, that continues to cultivate native maize, although they have adopted other technologies such as irrigation. We describe how migration, climate shocks, Mexican agricultural and rural development policies, and changing aspirations have shaped Indigenous Peoples’ culture of maize technology and yet, how being self-sufficient is essential for their resilience. We explore how these Indigenous Peoples make resilient communities through their comunalidad. Comunalidad involves rights to recreate tradition and culture but also protect themselves in the face of threat, as it is the space that allows them to enact their right to self-determination (usos y costumbres) and reinvent their social fabric and community-based work (tequio) to find continuity in life (fiesta) or be resilient. This hybridization around maize cultivation comes along with a hybridization of food, aspirations, identity, and culture as farmers are adapting to a changing world and expressing their sovereignty. Indigenous Peoples choose to take what suits them best from the pluriverse to create a hybrid life and adapt to a changing world. We use this case to show that we could be learning lessons from Indigenous Peoples and the importance of a rights-based approach to support resilient communities.
Keywords: native maize; Mexico; Indigenous Peoples food systems; climate change; migration; Indigenous Peoples; food sovereignty; resilience.
1. Introduction: Setting the scene
“50 years ago, I remember that several events like rains and pests hit my town badly. However, my parents and grandparents back then had many fields cropped, they had lots of maize, beans and crops. Thus, we did not feel it at all, we would manage to survive. All was different in 2010 when we were hit by a hurricane and strong rains blocked the entry to the mountains, and the stores ran out of maize and food. We did not have food and the only solution we found was to go up the mountains to get maize from other Indigenous Peoples that were farming more than us. I was ashamed then: how come I could call myself a farmer if I could not cultivate what I needed to feed my family? I wondered how I let this situation happen and how come, as a child, I never faced a situation like this” (Susana, Interview 2016).
It was a sunny day in March 2016 when we arrived in Yavesía, a tiny village located in the Zapotecan indigenous mountains of the Sierra Juarez in Oaxaca, Mexico, after a three-hour drive from Oaxaca City. We were amazed by the landscape and how the community seemed to be isolated, untouched, and calm. Yavesía can only be accessed by public transportation once a week in the community-managed bus service and has no cellular phone signal. We saw the maize in traditional fields using the milpa system, an intercropping system that includes native maize, potatoes, pumpkin, beans, and other crops. We wondered how this seemingly untouched community was able to continue with its way of life as we live in a globalised and changing world. It was like being trapped in time. We wondered, are these Indigenous Peoples the “noble savages” (Raymond, 2007) attached to the earth (Verschoor, 2009), mother earth and native seeds protectors as portrayed by many social activist groups?
As we stepped from the car to continue the journey on foot, we spotted one milpa field with a sprinkler irrigating the milpa and peach trees. Then we wondered, how did this Indigenous farmer get an irrigation system in his milpa? Does this mean that these Indigenous Peoples fit the “peasant-is-obsolete” narrative (Nally 2016:572), and their food systems are inefficient and need to be modernised to ensure food security? Does this mean they had to replace their native maize with hybrid maize and other technologies to increase their maize production? We continued our discussion as some of our peers indicated that we needed to ensure food security through increasing maize production and replacing obsolete milpa systems, while others argued that we should not pervert or touch the pretty traditional milpa systems.
As we continued walking and discussing, we found Sagrario, a 45-year woman, tilling her milpa. She was fertilising her milpa alone and we offered her some help, to which she agreed. She told us to cover the fertiliser with soil and add soil to the root of the maize plants to prevent the fertiliser from being swept away by the wind or rain and to prevent the plants from falling over. We realised that Sagrario’s milpa did not look like the traditional milpas we know, which commonly have four to five maize plants spaced every 0.90-1.5 m. Sagrario’s milpa had three maize plants sowed every 40-60 cm. We could also see some peaches hanging from the trees that are not characteristic of the region and some pipes lying on the ground that she was using to irrigate her field.
We praised Sagrario on how pretty and modern her milpa field looked and she replied that her milpa field had not always looked like that. It was thanks to multiple events that she learned to combine different technologies to cope with extreme events and changing circumstances. She said that the landscape had changed a lot since she was a child, migration and other factors had affected their livelihoods. While migration had allowed them to get better incomes and caused a reduction in farming, they relied on local and national stores to complement their food needs. However, in 2010 they learned that money was not sufficient to ensure food; rather, they needed to ensure their self-sufficiency. They had experienced some challenges after the tortilla crisis in 2007 but in 2010 a hurricane disrupted the local stores which ran out of maize: they had money but no sources to buy food, and roads were blocked to enter their mountains. Their only solution to find food was to go higher up in the mountains. Indigenous Peoples in Yavesía then recalled that in the past, before migration became central to their lives, they had also had extreme events, but they were always self-sufficient, and they survived. They reflected on the need to innovate more and reclaim their food self-sufficiency which explains the milpa systems we saw with different ‘modern technologies’. In 2021 with the COVID-19 pandemic their experience was different: now they were self-sufficient and even though the local stores also had food and maize shortages, they managed to be self-sufficient.
As we engaged more with the Indigenous Peoples in Yavesía in 2016 and 2021, we had more questions. We wanted to understand what were the drivers that shaped their milpa cultivation and how these drivers affected the resilience and livelihoods of a community like Yavesía. What was the role of policy on their livelihoods? What were their strategies to cope with change? How can these strategies help to cope with the multiple crises we are facing?
1.1. In the name of food security: The problem of the productivity-oriented paradigm in times of crisis
We live in a time of crises caused by conflict, climate shocks, and the threat of a global recession. Thus, policymakers and practitioners continue debating on what is the best approach to solve the current multiple crises as every night around 828 million people go to bed hungry (FAO et al., 2022). For decades, central to the discussions of food insecurity has been the need to produce more, but with the current climate crisis we still think of producing higher yields but also in a more sustainable way. As conflicts have also arisen, particularly with Russia and Ukraine, with the increase in the cost of fertilisers and staple crops, and with the experience of COVID-19, we also see the need to make shorter and more resilient food systems.
For decades, the productivity or modernisation paradigm has promoted intensive agriculture in which food security is equated as a synonym for high crop yields, looking down upon traditional food systems as they have been considered inefficient. The modernisation model was rooted in the Green Revolution that emerged in the 1960s, when high-yielding varieties, monocropping, and intensive chemicals were highly promoted to maximize the yields of specific crops per unit of input (Pingali, 2012). While we cannot deny some of the positive outcomes of this model to feed the world, we cannot also deny that this model led to unsustainable food systems as today, intensive agriculture accounts for 30% of the greenhouse gases contributing to climate change (Fanzo and Downs 2021), uses 70% of the freshwater, and is responsible for 80% of the world’s deforestation (FAO, 2017).
In a time of crisis, food diversity is essential. This productivity-oriented paradigm has made us dependent on a few crops, i.e., wheat, maize, and rice provide at least 50% of the world’s caloric intake (Awika, 2011 and Chivenge et al., 2015) and with 25 other crops make up 90% of it. Relying on a few crops when food chains are disrupted, as we experienced with COVID-19 or the current conflict between Russia and Ukraine (World Bank, 2022), threatens the world’s food security (Triphanti, 2016) as food supplies are reduced. Additionally, in an era of climate change threatening life, studies suggest that promoting monocropping has caused the loss of biodiversity (Jacques et al., 2012).
There are other alternatives to food security, e.g. Indigenous Peoples’ food systems, that are more sustainable. Indigenous Peoples and their practices are responsible for preserving 80% of the world’s remaining biodiversity (Sovrevilla, 2008). These systems are largely rich in biodiversity and adapted to broad range of environments. For example, we can find these native maize-based systems in the arid lands of the Arizonan desert with Tohono peoples or in the ‘chakras’ in the rainforests in the Peruvian Amazonas or in the Mayan peninsula where these milpas have been adapted to cope with constant extreme events (Camacho-Villa, et al., 2021). The richness of native maize systems is so large that a Guatemalan Mayan system can contain up 143 different foods (FAO, Bioversity International y CIAT 2021) or the Yucatecan Mayan milpa or traditional food systems that contain up to 250 species (Toledo, 2008) and 329 medicinal plants that are recognised by their smell and taste (Ankli et al., 1999). These alternative food systems have remained largely neglected in mainstream research and policy because the dominant assumption has been that Indigenous Peoples need to be lifted out of poverty and food insecurity by increasing their crop yields through the use of modern technologies, e.g. improved seeds, fertilisers, machinery, among others (Byerlee et al., 2009; Johnston & Mellor, 1961; Thompson & Scoones, 2009).
1.2. The case of Mexico: Maize policies and the productivity-oriented paradigm
Mexico has not been an exception to the dominance of the modernisation-productivity paradigm, and the main beneficiaries have been a small group of wealthy farmers who could be incorporated into the market-oriented system (Appendini & Liverman, 1994; Fox & Haight, 2010; Gates, 1988). Thus, national policies discouraged the use of native maize and favoured the use of improved maize varieties to increase productivity. The most prominent intervention as part of this process was the Green Revolution, a ground-breaking international agricultural intervention with the aim of increasing productivity, that took shape with the Mexican Agricultural Programme (MAP) in the 1940s (Harwood, 2009). Some years later, Plan Puebla in 1968 (Cano & Winkelmann, 1972; Felstehausen & Díaz-Cisneros, 1985; Redclift, 1983) and Plan Maíz in 1969 (Maximiliano-Martínez et al., 2011) emerged, which drew on elements of the MAP but applied them in more localised contexts. At the time, these interventions were highly criticized for their focus on productivity and for ignoring local contexts and environmental and equity concerns. In 1963, the Mexican government, attempting to reach self-sufficiency and modernisation of agriculture, implemented the National Company of Popular Subsistence (CONASUPO) that would collect maize and other basic crops from Mexican farmers and allocate them to different regions of the country, including to rural areas to supply local food demands (Appendini et al., 2003; Gates, 1988). The increased reliance of local communities on government stores of grains led to a sharp reduction in local production and self-sufficiency (Appendini, 1992). By the end of 1980s, the era of self-sufficiency was collapsing, and internal debt was increasing, giving rise to a movement away from government intervention and control of grain markets toward the free-market capitalism of neoliberalism (Yunez-Naude, 2015). As a result, the Mexican government signed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) (now the Mexico-United States-Canada Agreement [MUSCA]) to reduce state intervention, with the goal that farmers capable of competing in an international market would coexist, while others would adopt more competitive crops or move into other economic activities (Nadal, 2000; Yunez-Naude, 2015). Alongside this move, the Programme for Direct Assistance in Agriculture (PROCAMPO) was launched in 1994 to help maize growers for 15 years as they transitioned to more competitive productivity agriculture (Yunez-Naude & Barceinas, 2002).
At present, Mexico is not self-sufficient on maize: this affects our resilience and the situation has remained like this over the last decades. One of the last shocking moments was in 2007, the tortilla crisis linked to the boom of biofuels in the U.S. (Ogle, 2009; Thomaz & Carvalho, 2011), the catastrophic effects of climate change in Mexico in 2009 (Caballero, 2012; Seager et al., 2009; Tirado & Cotter, 2010), and the dependency of Mexico on foreign sources for at least one third of maize demands (Turrent Fernández et al., 2012) showed the vulnerability of Mexico as policies continue reinforcing inequality and this dependency on external food sources. Again, in 2021 with COVID19 we witnessed how large-scale farming was more affected than traditional farming as they rely less on external inputs (Lopez-Ridaura et al., 2021).
Then, the question is, should we be looking into traditional food systems or Indigenous Peoples in the building of resilient communities? In the next sections we provide an ethnographic study that relies on how Indigenous Peoples in Yavesía, Oaxaca, Mexico have learned to cope with change and how sovereignty and self-determination is essential for their food and livelihoods security.
1.2.1. Food security or food sovereignty for resilient communities: hybridizing the culture of maize
While we argue that to ensure food security, we need to look at other alternative food paradigms besides the modernisation paradigm, in this paper we explain how Indigenous Peoples in Yavesía hybridize elements of the modern paradigm with their traditional food systems and livelihoods in relation to their maize cultivation to adapt to a changing world and community, i.e., how they hybridize their cultures of technology. When referring to technology we draw on its expansive understanding as “the human capacity to make or unmake” (Richards, 2009:495), which renders technology as a highly social activity that is subject to the norms and of “those who make” and the contexts in which they are embedded (MacKenzie & Wajcman, 1999). We use the concept of cultures of technology from Nowotny (2006) to explain that the same technology can have different meanings based on the cultural elements of the actors interacting with it.
In reflecting on how farmers hybridize their cultures of technology, we go beyond past research which has addressed the concept of agricultural hybridization primarily in terms of material mixing. For example, how indigenous farmers mix different types of maize seeds, i.e. “creolisation”, which refers to genetic blending of local maize with modern high-yielding varieties (Bellon et al., 2006; Keleman et al., 2009); or participatory plant breeding, which combines genetic hybridization of the plants, but also involves a hybridization of knowledges (Almekinders & de Boef, 2000; Humphries et al., 2015). However, the hybridization in this research goes further because it explores the hybridization of other components of maize cultivation, such as the socio-cultural elements which form the cultures of technology. Thus, while for a scientist a maize seed can be a pool of genes, for Indigenous Peoples it can be a sacred spiritual guide that takes care of the community (Nazarea, 2013). For our paper, therefore, hybridization is not simply a matter of mixing genes, seeds, or purely agricultural technologies, but also a matter of hybridizing the cultures in which those technologies are embedded.
While some of these ideas on hybridization have been introduced earlier in the broader concept of development, e.g. the Pluriverse from Escobar (2018) and Kothari et al. (2019), and El vivir bien (Gudynas, 2011), these perspectives seldom reveal in detail the mundane practices and decisions of the farmers and do not fully explore how the clash between cultures of technology affects farmers’ lives and resilience. In this study, our entry point is maize cultivation in Santa María Yavesía, a Zapotecan indigenous community in Oaxaca, Mexico, and the farmers’ collaboration with the MasAgro Programme (Sustainable Modernisation of Traditional Agriculture in Mexico) and led by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre (CIMMYT). We explore here how the farmers decided to hybridize and how hybridization plays out in the daily practices of the farmers from Yavesía as they work to achieve resilience and food sovereignty in times of multiple crises.
2. Methodology
2.1. Approach and data collection
Our study is based in Santa María Yavesía (Figure 1), a Zapotecan indigenous community located in the State of Oaxaca. We follow a case study approach (Gerring, 2007; Suryani, 2008; Yin, 2003) in which we analyse the history of the practices around maize in Yavesía from 1940 until today. While the researchers were collaborating with MasAgro Programme from 2012-2020, the data collection took place between March and September 2016 when the researchers spent several months in the community and involved semi-structured interviews with key-actors and participatory observation to construct a timeline of critical events that affected local farming practices around maize. In 2018 and 2020, the researchers were also in touch remotely with four Indigenous Peoples to get updates on how the situation unfolded in Yavesía.
In this paper we acknowledge that there is no single definition of Indigenous Peoples, but we acknowledge the characterisation of the UN on Indigenous Peoples’ Rights (2004:2) as “Indigenous communities, peoples and nations are those which, having a historical continuity with pre-invasion and pre-colonial societies that developed on their territories, consider themselves distinct from other sectors of the societies now prevailing on those territories, or parts of them. They form at present non-dominant sectors of society and are determined to preserve, develop and transmit to future generations their ancestral territories, and their ethnic identity, as the basis of their continued existence as peoples, in accordance with their own cultural patterns, social institutions and legal system”.
In this paper we also acknowledge that Indigenous Peoples can be hunters, gatherers, fishermen, among others, but given the characteristics of the food system and livelihoods we describe in this paper, we refer to them as Indigenous farmers not to use ‘Indigenous’ as an adjective but instead to indicate that these Indigenous Peoples are right holders and do farming activities. Thus, when reading Indigenous Peoples or Indigenous farmers or Zapotecan farmers, or Zapotecan Indigenous farmer or farmers in this paper, we will be referring to the same group of Zapotecan Indigenous Peoples living in Yavesía.
For the data collection in this paper, we interviewed 25 Indigenous Peoples, using the life-histories method to identify key events in their lives, such as where they were born, if they have migrated or moved into a new location/place (and why), marriage, the birth of children and events that have shaped the community’s life (such as natural disasters). In most of the cases we focused on three points in Indigenous Peoples’ histories: their childhood, the time following their marriage, and the present day. We performed a systemic mapping (Lopez-Ridaura, 2014) of each of these points to identify what farming was like at these different stages: i.e. the location and number of fields, crops, topology and people engaged in the farming activities. All the farmers were interviewed at least twice.
We also interviewed three technicians working with the farmers in Yavesía, five technicians collaborating with or working on the MasAgro Project, eight researchers linked to the MasAgro Project and seven government officials with positions in agriculture and social development.
We also conducted participatory observation, joining in with some farming activities, and attended six training and field days with technicians and researchers. We also attended a workshop with farmers of the community around the dynamics of their livelihoods and sacred places to better understand their relationship with the nature. The organizer of the workshop was a researcher in a local institution and a member of the community.
Finally, we consulted the academic literature, the grey literature and analysed meteorological data using ERIC II software (IMTA, 2009) (from Ixtlán de Juárez meteorological station, the closest to Yavesía) and other reports to confirm extreme events cited by farmers, read newspapers to verify specific information shared by farmers and read studies done in the community by students of a local university and the internal reports of MasAgro Programme.
2.2. The study area: Santa María Yavesía, Oaxaca
Santa María Yavesía is Zapotecan community of 448 people, 107 of whom are bilingual, speaking Zapotecan and Spanish, and the rest only speaking Spanish. It is located 1900-2100 masl in the state of Oaxaca, in the southern part of Mexico (Figure 1).
The agricultural land of the community stretches from 1900 to 2500 masl, and the forest is found at 2500-3400 masl. The temperatures range between 10-18°C and annual precipitation is 1000-1500 mm. The total area is 9,147 ha. Only three percent of the land is used for agriculture and one percent is urban. Two main permanent water currents run through the community, later forming the Yavesía river (‘Shoo Raa’ in Zapotecan) that divides the community into two neighbourhoods: Asunción and San Miguel. The farmers refer to the microclimate along the river as humid and to the area above 2400 m as cold. The social organisation is communal by usos y costumbres, meaning that the lands are owned by the community and that they make decisions collectively. Despite the influence of other religions, the elements of nature still play a role in their cosmovision.
The centre of the community is at 1900 msal and here most of the families have set their homes close to each other along the river. Thus, when referring to the upper lands in this paper, we refer to the lands or fields located at a higher altitude from this reference point.
3. Results
3.1. Making resilience and milpa in Yavesía: hybridization of practices
We talked to Indigenous men, Indigenous women, Indigenous youth and Indigenous elders to learn about their resilience and how their milpa systems had changed over the time and why. During these conversations we learned that Indigenous Peoples had adopted many modern practices in cultivating their milpas, ranging from planting fruit trees to introducing irrigation. In the following section we describe some of these major changes.
3.1.1. Crop diversity and planting arrangements
According to Indigenous Peoples’ recollections, the milpas in the upper lands (> 2400 masl) changed the most (Figure 2): they had previously cultivated many crops and varieties there, but now they have largely been abandoned as many Indigenous Peoples have chosen to migrate and houses have been relocated to the central part of the community. A few farmers were still cultivating blue and yellow maize there in 2016. In contrast, the milpas in the lower lands (<2400 masl) are still cultivated intensively and the number of crops cultivated regularly in 1960 compared to those cultivated in 2016 increased from 13 to 23 (Figure 3).
Fruit trees have always been part of the milpa landscape, although their use has changed and expanded in recent years. In 1991, Eusebio, an Indigenous farmer who had explored several regions of Oaxaca as a rural teacher, learned to graft trees by observing agricultural practices in other places. He took this knowledge to his community and some Zapotecan farmers started grafting local varieties of fruit trees with improved cultivars to generate extra income by selling the fruit. But the real increase in fruit trees came later, in the 2000s and thereafter, when technicians from government programmes promoted the use of MIAF systems (milpa systems intercropped with improved varieties of grafted fruit trees of peaches, avocados, apples and nuts). These MIAF systems changed the milpa landscape because they used a more efficient topological planting arrangement (Figure 4) and grafting of local fruit trees with improved varieties. Indigenous women learned to process the fruit into marmalade for a more diversified diet and to sell it locally or in neighbouring communities.
3.1.2. Maize seeds, topology arrangements and harvesting
Although not immediately visible to the casual observer, there has also been a significant change in the planting distances between maize plants. In 2011, a year after hurricane Matthew had destroyed many milpas (Section 3.3.2.), Indigenous farmers and Benito Villa, a researcher from Chapingo University, started a farming field school where Indigenous Peoples tried out new techniques to improve their milpas, although the idea of “improving” meant different things to the researcher and to the farmers. Benito Villa wanted to increase Indigenous Peoples’ maize yields and suggested using improved native seeds from other regions with similar environmental characteristics to Yavesía. The researcher was an expert on participatory maize breeding, and he wanted his farming school to focus only on maize. Yavesía Indigenous farmers told him that mono-cropping was not an option for them. They argued:
Uncle Benito (the Chapingo researcher), this is not the way it works, we need our beans, our pumpkins, and other foods to feed us through the year. Change the maize seeds? Are you kidding? No, I have been using those seeds for many years, my land has gotten used to them, no way can I do that. If you want to try your new seeds, let us go there over the hill and there you can show us if your seeds really work. Planting two seeds every 20 cm? Are you kidding me? When am I going to finish sowing? Why not do as we do and plant every 60 cm because that is the length of my steps? This suits me better (Ines).
Benito and the Indigenous Peoples then developed a hybrid system that is still being used (Figure 5). Farmers plant two or three seeds per hole instead of the traditional five, every 0.4-0.6 m instead of 0.9-1.20 m. They realised that this gave them a larger number of cobs of a good size and still good grain filling, and more maize. Today the farmers and the researcher laugh about the negotiations, and they acknowledge that they both learned from each other and shaped their cultures around maize.
Because farmers are attached to their seeds, which they do not call native or improved maize, but rather simply maize, the researcher only taught them how to improve their seed selection process. Farmers used to select the seeds when the grains and cobs were already drying at home. Benito showed that it is more efficient to select the maize seeds while the maize plants are in the field so they can choose the desired characteristics, e.g., height of the plant, the diameter of the stalk, propensity to lodging, or the quality of the ears or husk, amongst others. Everardo is considered one of the most successful Indigenous farmers in the community and proudly shows his maize plants. He explained in detail how they learned to prevent undesired pollination.
“I put a red ribbon on the plants I like. I take off the tassel if I do not like that plant. Do you see my maize? It looks pretty doesn’t? Now I have fields with just blue, white, red, or yellow maize, I do not mix them anymore” (Everardo).
When selecting the seeds for the next cropping season, Indigenous farmers choose the maize cobs from the plants they like the most. Once those cobs are dried, the farmer selects again based on the appearance of the cob, the grains, the taste, and the colour. When they shell the maize cobs, they separate the larger grains from the bottom three quarters of the cob which will be used for next year’s seeds. Just before planting, the farmers shell off the small grains left on the cob, cook them, and eat them in a ritual to thank Mother Earth for last year’s seeds, and to ask her for a good cropping season.
Indigenous Peoples have also improved their harvest and grain storage techniques. In the past, Indigenous farmers would let the husks and maize dry on the upright plant, but now they bend the plant so that it dries faster even if it rains, with the added benefit that trapped humidity will not allow the development of diseases or pest attacks. While, in the past, Indigenous farmers would store their grains out in the open where they are susceptible to pests, now some farmers have purchased metal silos to store their grains and even those who have not use three-litre plastic bottles to store their grains to protect against pests. These three-litre bottles also allow farmers to take smaller amounts of maize for their weekly maize supply without exposing the rest of their grains to air and pests whenever they need to take their weekly maize to eat.
3.1.3. Water and soil fertility management practice
A very important change in Indigenous farmer’s culture around the milpa cultivation relates to water. Water is a main element of the cosmovision of Yavesía Indigenous Peoples, who regard the conservation of the river and forests as essential. Zapotecan people believe that water is sacred and that the rains are also sacred, so the time of maize cultivation was determined by the gods’ will. However, Zapotecan farmers realised that relying on rainfall was becoming increasingly challenging because they needed to sow their fields before their six-month migration (Section 3.3.1) and over time the rains started coming later and later. Therefore, they considered irrigating with water from the river. While the older farmers refused to use irrigation because of the sacredness of rainwater, the younger farmers agreed, considering that since the 1990s several farmers had been using the water from the river to irrigate fruit trees: “why should we not do the same with maize if we can still protect and preserve our forests and our water?” (Pablo).
The Zapotecan farmers, in collaboration with the researcher, installed two main irrigation lines on both sides of the centre of the community, with the farmers’ fields downhill of the main pipelines. The Zapotecan farmers requested a government subsidy in 2012 and added money from their own pockets and used their own labour to reduce costs to install the irrigation lines. Despite this, they still did not have enough funds to install both lines in the same year, so the second pipeline was completed two years after the first. Since installing these pipelines, the Zapotecan farmers adjusted their technology culture around maize and sow their fields before migrating by relying on irrigation if the rainy season has not yet started.
Finally, soil management practices have also changed because of migration. Up to the 1940s, farmers rotated their fields to allow soil fertility to recover: “We used to let the soils rest; we sowed them for three years and then gave them a break; some years we planted wheat instead of the milpa, so the soil could recover, but we cannot do that anymore” (Amanda).
Zapotecan farmers are aware of how plants use some soil nutrients and the importance of not exhausting them. They practised crop rotation, but when they relocated their fields to the lower lands, the land pressure there increased. While arable plots were still available in the upper lands, social gender norms did not allow women, who were the primary farmers following the migration of the men, to stay there alone to cultivate the land.
In 1970, the first chemical fertilisers were introduced into the community through several government programmes, although no studies were performed to determine the actual needs of the soil. Farmers did not adopt the fertilisers immediately but did begin using them in 1991 when they thought of them as ‘vitamins’ for their plants. Zapotecan farmers explained that they thought that the more fertilisers they added to the soil, the better the results would be. With Benito, Zapotecan farmers learned better soil management techniques. For example, they learned that each soil and crop had different requirements and that the fertilisers are more effective if added at specific phenological stages. Also, some Zapotecan farmers had their soils analysed and have reduced their fertilisation dosages from 300 g to 60 g, applying them twice in the cropping cycle. They also learned how to make organic fertilisers which they like because they value self-sufficiency and the cleanliness (as they call it) of the food they produce and eat. The Zapotecan farmers are also adopting the use of mycorrhizas that improve the rooting system and reduce lodging and therefore reduce the need for arrima, i.e., adding soil to the roots from five or six times per cropping cycle to only two or three times. This makes it easier for the women to take care of the milpa when the men are away.
3.2. Zapotecan Indigenous farmers’ culture of maize, food sovereignty and resilience
3.2.1. Native maize seeds as the source of life
Maize seeds are passed from one generation to other to secure a harvest and food supply. In the past, land tenure was linked to the men, who inherited land from their parents. As with the land, maize and other crops’ seeds that were used in the milpa were also passed from parents to sons. Because of this generational inheritance, these seeds were already adapted to the soil and environment conditions and increased the chances of a good harvest. As Toledo & Barrera-Bassols (2008) explain, because milpa systems are adapted to specific (marginal) environments, they are productive and rely on low inputs, and therefore, farmers adapt the seeds to their needs. Also, as seeds adapt to new environments, they also shape the diets and livelihood of farmers.
Nowadays, Zapotecan women also inherit land and seeds. Since men started to migrate, seed selection and crop management more often fall on women’s shoulders. For example, when farmers stopped cropping for a cycle or two and had no seeds to re-start farming again, it was the women who looked for seeds. Farmers believe that preserving their seeds is crucial for their survival (or resilience). They express shame when remembering that they stopped cropping as it made them vulnerable to food insecurity and could have threatened their entire existence (Section 3.3.2). Matilda explained to us:
“I had to go to another community to get maize seeds. I do not know why but I stopped farming two years in row; it was easier to buy maize than cultivate it. However, when we had the maize shortage in 2010, I knew we needed to do things differently. I got scared, this could not be happening to me. I do not want to ask farmers outside the community to help me out again” (Matilda).
In essence, Matilda’s experience reflect how native maize seeds are crucial for resilience.
3.2.2. Native maize and a diverse diet over the year
Maize is also intercropped with other crops as farmers need a range of crops to fulfil their dietary needs through the year and for specific cultural rituals and preferences.
We learned that there are different colours of maize and that each one plays a role in the diet of the farmer’s family. For example, Zapotecan Indigenous Peoples love pork tamales made with blue maize, but also enjoy a potato soup with local beans and yellow tortillas, whereas atole (a beverage) can only be made with white maize and is complemented with black beans. All these crops are part of their milpa.
Milpa systems provide a constant source of food throughout the year. Before the milpa crops are mature, farmers can take a few immature maize cobs and use them to make soup or a special elote tamal (a typical food) and pick the green beans or any other leaves or plants within the milpa to supply their immediate food needs. Finally, at the end of the winter even when the milpa fields have been harvested and seem empty, they still contain food. Zapotecan farmers dig the roots of the chayote (mirliton) that has turned into a tuber which can be cooked similarly to potatoes and can be made into soups, tamales, or snacks. Falkowski et al. (2019) suggest in a study performed in the Lacandona jungle that milpas alone can provide nearly the full caloric nutrients required for a healthy diet and that the combination with other traditional foods provide rich and nutritious diets. Zapotecan farmers in Yavesía balance their diets with other foods such as the chickens, cattle, sheep, pigs, or fish they raise or the wild animals and plants they harvest. And even these systems are not disconnected because the chickens or pigs get fed from the milpas too.
Approximately 2.8 million farmers (Eakin et al., 2014) rely on maize cultivation in Mexico. In colonial times, maize was taken to other regions of the world but despite the crop’s adaptability to a wide range of environments, it did not provide the same nutritional value as in Mexico (Baker, 2013:20) because the secret of its nutritional value was linked to the diversity of processing. In Mexico, there are more than 600 dishes derived from maize (El poder del consumidor, 2017) made up from the 63 different varieties of maize documented in Mexico. Thus, to have a milpa is to have a constant food source: a milpa is life, as farmers say.
3.2.3. Resilience and milpa as a social activity: the comunalidad
Resilience of Indigenous Peoples can be linked to the cultivation of land but also to other social elements tied to the process of milpa cultivation. Indigenous Peoples organise themselves around a concept born in the indigenous mountains of Oaxaca and which they call comunalidad (Martinez Luna, 2010). In this paper we use comunalidad to refer to a farmer’s culture of maize and in this section we elaborate on how those elements are intertwined.
Comunalidad is a living paradigm or principle that resembles a Yavesía farmer’s life: their territory or homeland, their shared work system called tequio which is also linked to the community-based organisation; their right to local self-determination through a system called usos y costumbres, and fiesta, the festivals and celebrations of life which are closely linked to maize as a source of life. When migration began, the practices around comunalidad and maize cultivation were reshaped, and new spaces emerged in which the social meaning of maize cultivation was reconfirmed, but in a reconfigured form.
For example, back in the 1950s, maize cultivation was conducted by groups of families through the tequio process. The tequio process of farming involved a division of labour within families, with the men responsible for tilling the soil and the women cooking for everyone to celebrate at the end of the day. For example, three Indigenous farming families A, B and C would work together. On day one, these three families worked in the fields of family A, on day two they worked in the field of B and on day three they worked in the fields of family C. The hosting family cooked a good meal for all who helped, but each family had to bring its own maize tortilla. All the tortillas, of different colours, textures and flavours, were placed in a big clay comal (pan). Indigenous families joining the sowing shared their tortillas, which also helped them to choose new seeds for the next cropping season with expressions like: “I like this tortilla, can I have some of your seed?” (Severino). Indigenous families enjoyed spending time in the fields because they celebrated and asked Mother Earth to provide them with a good harvest that fulfilled their food needs. Every time that Indigenous families performed an activity in the fields, they also praised Mother Earth pouring some mezcal or pulque (traditional alcoholic beverage) and women cooked the best meal they could to share with all the tequio participants.
“We loved coming to the field as children. We did not eat chicken every day but when we were working in the fields, the meals were the best. We had a big feast to celebrate with Mother Earth and request an abundant harvest to provide us food for the rest of the year. The fields were the best places to eat” (Eloisa).
When Zapotecan farmers started to seasonally migrate, this affected the tequio and the larger social fabric of the community (Section 3.3.1). By 2016, less than 20% of farming families used tequio to cultivate their lands and have had to adapt to other systems of sharing their seeds to maintain the local comunalidad culture.
Much of that new system emerged following a maize shortage after hurricane Matthew in 2010 (Section 3.3.2.), when Zapotecan farmers realised how their practices around maize cultivation had changed and how life-threatening it was not to be self-sufficient in maize. Building on the living principle grounded in the comunalidad, Zapotecan farmers developed other spaces for exchanging seeds and knowledge, to make their community food sovereign and more resilient again. In 2011, Zapotecan farmers opened a community seed bank, managed by the whole community, and supported by the municipality and Benito, the researcher. Here the Zapotecan farmers can store and exchange their maize and other crops seeds that they cultivate in their milpas. It is like an open library of seeds: anyone from Yavesía can access them but should also replace the seeds (s)he takes and be willing to share his or her own seeds too. Another communal space for seeds and knowledge exchange is the field farming school where farmers try out different seeds. The Zapotecan farmers actively participating in the farming school are not the same every year because of new priorities (such as having a public responsibility with the municipality or taking care of a sick relative), but all farmers still have access to and benefit from the community-based seed bank and related activities, because they are part of the community. In 2014 the village also started a maize fair, alongside the main festival, creating a competition that gives prizes to the farmers with the most diverse milpas (in terms of crops) and the most attractive maize (medium-sized and healthy grains, long and well-filled grains). Zapotecan farmers proudly say that they now harvest more than one ton of maize per hectare whereas in the past they only harvested 300 kg.
3.3. The drivers change in the culture of technology of maize and resilience
We have discussed how the practices and material elements of the maize cultivation have changed over time and elaborated on how those elements are intertwined with Zapotecan farmers’ livelihoods. In this section we describe the drivers that shaped Zapotecan farmers’ culture of technology around maize cultivation. The drivers can be broadly categorised into three types of events: migration, climatic shocks, and local and international policies. Table 1 summarises these events and the effects they have had on the community.
3.3.1. Migration and the promise of a better life
The changes in milpa practices are shaped by migration waves in Yavesía through their effect on the community’s social fabric.
According to oral testimonies and Garcia (2008) in 1946 about a third of the men migrated to the U.S. through the “Bracero Programme” (manual labourer programme), expecting to improve their incomes. At the end of WW2 their labour was needed to work in agricultural fields. Zapotecan farmers indicate that their migration was mostly sparked by curiosity about the U.S. This first major migration wave affected the social fabric of the collective tequio linked to the maize cultivation. Men were responsible for the tilling and sowing while women were mostly occupied with the cooking to fulfil the tequio rituals. With the men temporarily working in the U.S., social norms dictated that women could not stay alone on farms in the hills surrounding the village. And even if they did, without the man to lead the work in the field while the woman led the meal preparation, the traditional practice of tequio around maize cultivation could not be maintained in the same way. Thus, when the men started migrating to the U.S. in 1940s the cultivated land decreased, with upland plots and surrounding houses mostly being abandoned and milpa cultivation done mainly on individual basis in the lower lands.
A second wave of migration occurred in the 1980 when the last mine in the region, which employed quite a few Yavesía farmers, shut down (Méndez-García, 2017), and more farmers migrated to Mexico City and the U.S. New opportunities to work temporarily in the U.S. in the mid-1990s fuelled another migration wave. Zapotecan farmers recall that while they still cropped the land, they did not consider being self-sufficient to be very important, as the women were busy taking care of the household and could afford to buy food in the CONASUPO government stores (Section 3.3.3.). Although some farmers got permanent residence in the U.S., the majority continued returning to Yavesía because of their connection to their motherland and cultural identity. By 2008, similar programmes requiring temporary labourers in the U.S. reached the point where at least one member of each family was living outside Yavesía for at least part of the year (Garcia, 2008). The farmers typically migrate for about six months and return in November to celebrate the annual community fest (Section 3.2). With the promise of an income and a better life, migration to the U.S. has continued until today. Switching between these different worlds, their territory in Yavesía, nearby cities and the U.S. is normal for farmers from Yavesía.
At the same time, the exposure to these other worlds can also bring external knowledge into the community and enrich farmers’ agricultural practices. For example, in 1991, Eusebio, a local Yavesía farmer, returned with knowledge he had obtained from other farming communities about grafting improved varieties of fruit trees with local varieties and using fertiliser, which he shared with other Yavesía Zapotecan farmers.
3.3.2. Climate shocks and threats to food security
Zapotecan farmers explain that while there had always been climactic shocks that hit their community, they had been resilient and had overcome those shocks. It was not until the 2000s that a series of events persuaded the farmers that their culture needed to adapt to increase their resilience.
The literature suggests that the heavy rains and a severe drought in Oaxaca in the 1940s were linked to food shortage and migration (Leon Santiago, 2015). Yet, Zapotecan farmers in Yavesía learned to deal with climate shocks in different ways. A drought in 1943 and heavy rains the following year (IMTA, 2009) affected the community, and while Zapotecan farmers recall that those events were calamitous as the rains led to the blockage of the few roads leading in and out of the village, they did not result in a serious food shortage. Similarly, although in 1980 their milpas were attacked by pests, again the food supply was not seriously affected: the Zapotecan farmers were able to cope by having fields in different places which were not all affected by the pests.
However, in the second half of the 2000s, Zapotecan farmers realised that they had become vulnerable because they were not food self-sufficient anymore. In 2005, Hurricane Stan caused floods in Yavesía and many of the houses and fields along the riverside were destroyed. The effects did not seem to be long lasting: farmers rebuilt the damaged houses, and could meet their food needs by buying from the CONASUPO store. They also managed to cultivate maize in fields that were relocated to higher grounds. The community was then successively hit by a drought and heavy rains in 2008 and 2009. Yet with the few crops that Zapotecan farmers harvested and the CONASUPO store, they managed to satisfy the community’s maize needs. However, when in 2010 the storms caused by Hurricane Matthew cut off the roads that connected Yavesía with the rest of the world, there was a shortage of maize and other foodstuffs because CONASUPO stores could not be stocked. This posed a clear threat to the village, “We had money, but we could not buy maize nor other foods. There was no maize: how could we survive without maize?” (Irene).
Zapotecan farmers looked for maize in the hills around the village and from neighbouring communities and requested help from relatives living in the cities. This situation challenged farmers to think that they needed to be self-sufficient again, as with their maize and milpas they had been more resilient against such climatic shocks in the past. This event hit not only Yavesía but also several neighbouring communities and surrounding regions. In 2010 the regional manager of the CONASUPO stores, Flavio, also an inhabitant of the region and struck by the situation, visited several communities, including Yavesía, to discuss the food crisis. He invited Indigenous Peoples to meetings, and he challenged them as to why they still called themselves peasants when they were no longer self-sufficient. He asked them what they needed to become self-sufficient in maize again. The only ones who reacted were the farmers from Yavesía who asked Flavio to find someone who could help them to improve their maize system as they did not want to repeat this situation. This marked the beginning of the collaboration between Benito, the researcher from Chapingo, and the Yavesía Zapotecan farmers, and the encounter and hybridization of two cultures of technology around maize.
3.3.3. The role of national and international policies
Yavesía is not an isolated place: despite its remote location in the mountains of Oaxaca, policy and globalisation affect it. The Bracero Programme of the Mexican and U.S. governments encouraged men from Yavesía to migrate as early as the 1940s. Also in Yavesía a CONASUPO food store opened in the 1960s (Garcia, 2008), where Zapotecan farmers could buy basic foods such as maize, beans, milk, eggs and sugar. With an easy source for their basic food needs, more Zapotecan farmers migrated to increase their income and fulfil their aspirations.
When farmers from Yavesía met Benito in 2010 they clearly sought collaboration. The decision to work collectively with Benito was decided in a community assembly, as part of the comunalidad system and the culture of collective self-determination. Benito describes that Zapotecan farmers offered a piece of land to try out several farming techniques and establish the “little farming school”, as farmers called it, and they also agreed to provide seeds. However, establishing farm trials and processing seeds for a community seed bank also requires investment, plus the salaries of the technical advisory team. Benito had a long experience working on both participatory plant breeding using native maize and improvement of hybrid maize. He recognised that most of the funds that support native maize initiatives are mainly linked to biodiversity conservation and not to food security, while funds for hybrid or improved maize are more frequently allocated for food security. Thus, the funding is scarce for native maize initiatives that seek to move beyond preserving biodiversity or food sovereignty. Benito nevertheless managed to get funding from different institutions and short funding programmes for 2011, 2012 and 2013. In 2014, the MasAgro Programme expanded its target group to include indigenous farmers cultivating native maize, due to a request by the Mexican government, who was its primary donor, to align with the National Crusade Against Hunger (Martinez-Cruz et al., 2020). The MasAgro programme leaders looked for people who were already running projects on food security and native maize, which led to the encounter between MasAgro programme, the Yavesía famers, and Benito.
3.4. The role of territory and self-determination in enabling resilience
The effects of migration, climate shocks and policies illustrate how native maize farmers hybridize traditional farming with other elements to adapt to a changing world and being resilient. One crucial element that facilitates the co-existence of the culture of native maize is the sense of territory of Yavesía Zapotecan farmers, one of the four core elements of the culture of comunalidad. In this section we explain the role of territory in allowing food sovereignty and resilience through hybridization.
First, the territory of Yavesía is the place where Zapotecan People can enact their self-determination. This territory is the ancestral land where their parents and grandparents lived and where their children will live. Because the government has recognised that farmers are the legal owners of this territory and agreed on respecting their internal ways of government and living called usos y costumbres, farmers can set rules within this territory and enact their right to self-determination. This allows Zapotecam farmers, for example, to welcome, adapt, or reject any intervention, like the collaboration with the researcher Benito, by consulting the community.
The territory is also the space where Zapotecan farmers enact social cohesion and their collective work system of tequio. Yavesía has been home to many Zapotecan generations of families and therefore farmers have developed a sense of belonging to a territory and a collectiveness where everyone knows and helps each other. This is why many farmers, despite being part-time migrants, always want to return to the place where they belong and can be resilient as a community. Dukpa et al. (2018) and Loring & Gerlach (2009) have explain how territory plays a key role in social cohesion and how it enables collective action as a living strategy. In the case of Yavesía, we see how communal values like reciprocity and labour and goods exchange, play a crucial role in community resilience, such as with the installation of irrigation systems or the milpa cultivation.
Another component linked to resilience and territory is the celebration of life, fiesta. The Zapotecan farmers work collectively to preserve their forest and their territory because it is home of Shoo Raa, their main deity linked to water, who taught them to care for the forest and nature. Farmers know that Yavesía contains the elements that allow them to survive and that they are the custodians of this territory. Many celebrations of life take place in Yavesía. Maize cultivation involves the celebration of life itself because Zapotecan people praise Mother Earth for a good harvest. As we discussed, the Zapotecan Peoples of Yavesía have learned that money cannot ensure them life and food sovereignty, thus, maize cultivation is still essential for living. This might help to explain why, despite the dominant modernising paradigm in Mexican agriculture (Fitting, 2006; Martinez-Cruz et al., 2020), native maize has co-existed.
The territory allows farmers to enact their right to self-determination and therefore resilience. In 2020, with the COVID-19 crisis, Indigenous Peoples used their right to self-determination and their system of usos y costumbres to enact a “community isolation” (Martinez-Cruz, 2020) to fight the pandemic, by banning entry to anyone who was not from the community or who did not live there regularly. This strategy protected the community, as Yavesía was part of the so-called “municipalities of hope” because no cases of COVID-19 were registered until December 25th, 2020 (Mexican government official site, 2020). We spoke to Mercedes, a 60-year-old farmer, on July 25th, 2020, and she said in relation to safety and food sovereignty:
“We are locked down since March. We decided not to let anyone to come in. My son is in another city now, but he should not come. Even my sister living in Oaxaca City cannot come anymore, it is part of taking care of ourselves, we only allow the entry of doctors or any other essential person/service in the community because they could put us at risk. I am not selling food as regularly, but I do not worry. I have seasonal fruits and food in my backyard and fields. Also, my friends and neighbours come and help me, my friend Alicia comes every afternoon to make sure I am doing okay. People are doing okay, we are actually selling our own processed foods and fruits among ourselves, so we share what we have available to eat”.
She also explained that the migrants left before the quarantine was declared in the community and reached their destinations safely, and they hope that by the end of the year, everyone can return to continue their normal life.
Within this context, territorial control, food sovereignty, and the culture of maize technology enables resilience in the face of challenging events. Only within their territory Indigenous Peoples are able to share with and take care of each other, enact their autonomy and right to self-determination, and defend their culture and identity.
4. Conclusions
With this research, we aimed to understand how Indigenous Peoples in Mexico hybridized their culture of technology around maize with the goal of maintaining their resilience. We draw on the daily experiences of the Zapotecan Indigenous People in the village of Yavesía in southern Mexico to understand how and why this hybridization takes place. We showed how the Yavesía maize technology culture embraces intangible elements that are at odds with the modernisation-productivity paradigm, but also that Zapotecan farmers’ technology culture of maize is not static. Their maize culture is rather dynamic and resilient, and it has hybridized and adopted elements of modernisation over time to fit changing conditions and preserve autonomy and security linked to a territory and self-determination.
We conclude this paper by reflecting on the need to embrace alternative ways of doing agricultural research and development that recognize the complexity of resilience related to food systems and that considers rationales other than agricultural productivity but that does not essentialise traditional forms of farming either. With a better understanding of the broader cultural meaning of maize technology and the dynamics of hybridization within it, we argue that Indigenous Peoples and farmers are innovators, but policies have an important role in shaping their livelihoods. We also argue that rather than imposing models on them, in creating resilient communities we should be respecting their right to self-development and become facilitators to allow them to hybridise and come up with the best food systems that fit their changing needs and aspirations.
Historically, modernisation-productivity policies have forced migration in rural and Indigenous Peoples territories; Yavesía, however, is an example of how farmers have hybridized and adapted their livelihoods to become part-time migrants as clearly there is an attachment to land linked to their ways of seeing the world. In a way, Yavesía Indigenous farmers have partly exercised their “right to stay home” (Bartra, 2008) and have also migrated voluntarily. As development practitioners, if our goals are helping to improve people’s lives and right to food, we need to embrace alternative ways of understanding the world, respect farmers’ and indigenous peoples’ right to self-determination to define their “will to improve” (Li, 2007) in the terms they want, whether it is called food security, food sovereignty, comunalidad (Martinez Luna, 2010) or something else while they aim to be resilient.
Relevant to the discussions of climate change and resilience is the concept of Comunalidad that we developed here. To create resilient communities like Yavesía, we need to respect Indigenous Peoples’ territorial rights as their territory enables them to create strategies that protect them like with COVID-19. Also, we need to respect their right to self-determination and self-development as they ought to know better what they need and what fits them, they are innovators by nature and can be resilient if we support them. In the same line, it is their collective action and values that enables them to look after each other and create collective strategies to cope with a changing world.
Indigenous Peoples have a vast knowledge; like the farmers or Indigenous Peoples of Yavesía there are approximately 476 million more around the world, speaking 4,000 of the 7,000 remaining languages (UNDP, 2018). Despite representing only 6% of the world’s population, they pose the answers to maintain 80% of the world’s remaining biodiversity and inhabit even territories and water than many would call hostile. Unfortunately, Indigenous Peoples are under constant threat: policies displace them, i.e., every year 25% of Indigenous lands are under pressure of extractive industries (Kennedy et al.,2022) and every year 200 environmentalists are murdered, being 60% of Indigenous Peoples. But also, other policies threaten Indigenous Peoples and the world’s resilience, e.g., food and education policies, when native food systems are displaced or monocroppings promoted, when education does not promote the use of language or Indigenous Peoples’ seeds and knowledge as food policy are looked down upon.
To conclude, we learned from Susana and Sagrario that money is not sufficient to be resilient, that resilience strategies are linked to self-sufficiency, culture, collective action, territory, i.e. to their comunalidad. Also, we learned that policies have an effect on peoples’ livelihoods and that Indigenous Peoples have knowledge that can be used and practices that can be scaled up, but first we need to depart from a rights-based approach and allow them to continue combining the best of different worlds and be facilitators of the changes they want to pursue.
5. Acknowledgments
This research was funded by the PROBEPI (Postgraduate Fellowships Programme for Indigenous People in Mexico) led by the Centre for Research and Advanced Studies in Social Anthropology in collaboration with the Mexican National Council of Science and Technology (CONACyT). We would like to acknowledge the support of the Mexican Government’s Secretaría de Agricultura, Ganadería, Desarrollo Rural, Pesca y Alimentación (SAGARPA) via the Sustainable Modernization of Traditional Agriculture (MasAgro) Programme. We appreciate and acknowledge the support of Martha Wilcox, and the Socioeconomics and Sustainable Intensification Programs within the CIMMYT. Our gratitude goes out to all the farmers in Santa María Yavesía, Mario Fernández and the technicians (especially Benito Villa) and officials who participated in the study for their time, knowledge, and openness. We would also like to thank Nicholas Parrott and Levi Adelman for their empathetic and perceptive English-language editing. We would also like to thank our anonymous reviewers who helped improve this manuscript.
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