Here in Oaxaca, the southwestern Mexican state known for rich cultural traditions ranging from intricate artisan goods to vibrant music and dance, the veneration for corn is apparent when surveying some of the area’s favorite foods. You might greet your day here with a steaming mug of atole, a sweetened corn gruel akin to a thinned-out porridge; enjoy a midmorning snack of memelas, thick corn tortillas swiped with pork lard and a variety of other toppings; and, at dinnertime, crunch into a tlayuda, an oversized tortilla stuffed with mozzarella-like quesillo cheese and griddled over hot coals until crisp. And if, for some reason, the Oaxacan adoration of corn wasn’t glaringly obvious, a stroll through the area’s yearly Feria Estatal de la Agrobiodiversidad—the state fair of agrobiodiversity—clears the matter up in no time. 

This much-anticipated daylong event, which aims to both promote and protect Oaxaca’s agricultural richness, takes place every year in late November or early December. This year, the fair opened its doors on Saturday, December 2, in the community of San Pablo de Mitla, located about an hour’s drive east of the capital, Oaxaca City. A multisensory celebration of local crops ranging from sweet potatoes to medicinal herbs to amaranth, the Fería naturally has a heavy presence of corn. This year, visitors to the fair—who range from foodie members of the public to agronomy students to biologists and more—were greeted by an elaborate arch bedecked in multicolored corn kernels and flowerlike dried husks, with a mosaic-style image depicting a woman with long braids emerging from an ear of corn.

Visitors to the fair admire offerings from the mountainous Sierra Mixe region of Oaxaca. (Photo: Lauren Rothman)

Passing through the archway, visitors arrived under a big white tent where more than 500 farmers from across the state and a handful from out of state displayed their colorful, edible wares. Sprawled out on the ground atop well-worn petates (woven-fiber mats) or seated on low stools, the farmers showed off their hard-earned ears of corn, yes, but also laid out carefully arranged piles of smooth, shiny beans, bowls of bright red and yellow chile peppers, verdant heaps of string beans and many more crops. This year, according to to the Secretaría de Fomento Agroalimentario y Desarrollo Rural—the governmental body that’s part of a multigroup organizing committee that puts the fair together—more than 500 expositors belonging to 16 indigenous ethnic groups were present, bringing with them 35 of Mexico’s 64 native variants of corn alongside other important crops.

In Mexico, as in the rest of the modern world, biologically diverse traditional agriculture is increasingly being crowded out by hybrid and genetically modified crops that can withstand heavy applications of industrial herbicides and pesticides. For many millennia, the land of the milpa—an interdependent, mutually beneficial growing system of corn, beans, squash and the class of wild-growing greens collectively known as quelites—the country, since the so-called Green Revolution of the 1950s and 60s, has increasingly shifted to vast, chemical-dependent monocultures of crops, including corn, limes, papaya and single-species forests grown for harvesting timber. 

A kaleidoscope of native corn varieties, plus colorful beans in a range of shades. (Photo: Lauren Rothman)

The idea for the Fería, now in its 11th year, was born as a response to this ecological crisis, which necessarily endangers the existence of small-scale traditional crops that are more time consuming to grow and less lucrative to sell, according to Girmey López Martínez, an agricultural engineer and promoter of traditional agriculture. Each year, the fair unites a diverse group of farmers who continue to grow traditional Oaxacan crops even in the face of the rising tide of big ag, sharing their products with the public in order to help maintain culinary familiarity with them, as well as saving seeds to exchange them with other farmers they meet at the fair in an additional effort to maintain agricultural diversity in the region.

“The aim of the fair is to strengthen and maintain the biodiversity of the region’s gardens, milpas, coffee plantations and cacao plantations,” said Martínez in an interview a few days after the most recent edition of the fair, which he helped fundraise. In addition to an increasing dependence on monocropping in Oaxaca, Martínez cited factors such as the growth of the local ranching industry and the explosion of unsustainable ecotourism practices as additional pressures that endanger agricultural diversity in the region. 

The display of husband-and-wife producers José Gregorio Justo and Reina Ramirez Ronquillo from the rainforested Chinantla region, which includes yucca root, fresh banana leaves, and chayote gourd. (Photo: Lauren Rothman)

For husband-and-wife producers José Gregorio Justo and Reina Ramirez Ronquillo from the rainforested Chinantla region of Oaxaca, continuing to grow the corn sown by their ancestors is of utmost importance. “We can’t lose the traditions we’ve had since the olden times,” Ronquillo said at the fair as she stood behind the couple’s abundant display of organically grown sugarcane, bananas, squashes, green beans, coffee, beans and several types of corn. “Where we live, lots of people are growing genetically modified corn. But we know that what we grow is better than that type of corn. And we’re taking care of the soil, too.”

Accompanied at her display by her daughter-in-law, Ronquillo added that farming in the old way takes future generations into consideration, too. “We don’t buy anything at the store,” she said. “Everything we eat, we grow. Lots of mothers and fathers today are buying their children sodas and chips, and it’s pure poison. Our grandchildren eat boiled chayotes, bananas, yucca; we make a fresh infused water to drink and it’s much healthier.”

Nearby, Maria de Jesús Fuentes attended to her display of panela, or raw sugar-sweetened tostadas made from native corn and flavored with additional ingredients such as cacao and grated coconut. Fuentes had traveled from the Mandimbo community close to the Oaxacan coast and, in addition to her prepared products, had in tow a variety of young fruit trees ranging from jackfruit to starfruit to mango. She explains that part of her work is saving the seeds from different types of fruit, both to trade with other farmers as well as to grow into trees that she sells. 

“There are two major threats to criolla [native] seeds today,” said Fuentes. “One is the threat of all the GMO crops everyone is sowing. And the other is that the young people just don’t want to keep farming. Under both of these threats, species can go extinct. And that is why we save seeds.”

Women producers of Tlahuitoltepec, in the Sierra Mixe region, display corn (of course), plus prickly chayote and freshly fermented pulque drink, made from the tapped sap of the agave plant. (Photo: Lauren Rothman)

While many of the vendors adhere to organic practices, others continue to sow native crops but take advantage of the convenience offered by agrochemicals, such as one farmer from the mountainous La Cañada region who admitted to mixing commercial fertilizer in with goat manure. 

Overall, Martínez noted, the majority of the expositors left this year’s fair feeling delighted with the event and the opportunity to exchange products, seeds and ideas with other growers as well as with the Oaxacan public. “This is our second year participating, and we really enjoy being here,” said Ronquillo from the Chinantla region. “It makes us happy to be able to offer the products that we grow.”

The post In Oaxaca, a State Fair That Celebrates Native Crops’ Rich Legacy appeared first on Modern Farmer.

“What we’re going to be doing today is pruning,” Sanchez tells the group. “We’ll start with the banana trees, and once we’ve thinned out that line, we’ll move on to the taller eucalyptus.” She explains that this is one of the most important tasks in agroforestry, because the hormones that the pruned branches release into the soil below will nourish plant beds and help the plants grow stronger and faster.

This location in Tlacochahuaya is called Tierra del Sol, a regenerative farming initiative and eco village founded in 1998 by Pablo Ruiz Lavalle, the site’s director. Formerly a commercial airline pilot, in that year Lavalle purchased one hectare—about two and a half acres—of land. Surrounded by plots characterized by intensive monocropping of crops such as corn, beans and alfalfa, the small area he purchased had been left unworked for some time and was in a sorry state. “The soil here was extremely compacted, there was very little organic material in it and it was stripped of any cover crops,” Lavalle says as we sit in an open-air gazebo on the property, accompanied by late-morning birdsong and the steady drone of forager honeybees flocking to Tierra del Sol’s scores of lavender plants. 

Pablo Ruiz Lavalle. (Photo: Lauren Rothman/Modern Farmer)

Glancing at the site’s neighboring parcels, where small-scale farmers work plots of the aforementioned crops using heavy applications of industrial pesticides and herbicides provided for free by the Mexican government, Lavalle’s description of the area’s not-too-distant past wasn’t hard to imagine. But looking over at Tierra del Sol’s garden plot, tall trees in various intensities of green swaying slowly above crops such as lettuce, broccoli, and a wide variety of herbs, it was more difficult to picture this land’s less-than-productive beginnings.

A key difference between Tierra del Sol and the dry, cracked farmland surrounding it? The practice of syntropic agriculture.

A view of Tierra del Sol’s plot of land. (Photo: Lauren Rothman/Modern Farmer)

The 4,500-square-meter plot where Sanchez would welcome volunteers to the tequio has been cultivated using principles of syntropic agriculture since 2019. This method of agroforestry, developed by the Swiss farmer and plant geneticist Ernst Götsch starting in the late 1970s, aims to work with nature, not against it, by reproducing certain principles of a naturally occurring forest in order to both cultivate food and rehabilitate the soil. 

In syntropic agriculture spaces, plants are grown in different strata, beginning with low-to-the-ground vegetables, legumes, fruits, and herbs and culminating in a tree canopy that is populated by different species depending on the growing climate. Throughout the year, those trees are periodically pruned, with the consistent bring-down of organic material to the gardens below working to restore soil fertility, increase the diversity of microbes and fungi and ensure the health of the crops growing on the garden floor. Regular pruning of trees also manages the sun and shade conditions, further contributing to a balanced ecosystem. In the presence of a well-managed syntropic agriculture system, soil grows healthier, regenerating in one-third the time it would if left unassisted. 

Born in 1948, Götsch relocated to Brazil in the early 1980s, eventually establishing himself and his family on 480 hectares of clear-cut Bahian forest that had been completely razed by the previous owner to produce lumber. There, with the initial intention of seeding a cacao plantation, Götsch set to work rehabilitating the land with his nascent principles of syntropic agriculture. In 1995, he published an early report on his farming methods, “Break-Through in Agriculture,” earning him local attention and acclaim. Today, Götsch’s verdant, ecologically diverse oasis in Brazil—a country known for its rampant deforestation practices—continues to attract the interest of advocates of regenerative agriculture. 

Volunteers pitch in during a work day at Tierra del Sol. (Photo: Lauren Rothman/Modern Farmer)

As the name “syntropic” implies, Götsch’s farming principles aim to produce more life, not less. As opposed to the entropic, chemical-heavy methods of monocropping that today dominate the global industrial farming landscape, syntropic systems increase matter and energy over time, building biodiversity and enriching soil fertility. And while the term syntropic agriculture is a fairly recent one, the practices it utilizes are anything but modern.

“It’s very important to recognize that when we talk about agroforestry, when we talk about syntropic agriculture, we’re talking about Indigenous agriculture,” says Namastê Messerschmidt, a longtime student and collaborator of Ernst Götsch who currently resides in Curitiba, in southern Brazil. In 2019, Sanchez, the consultant at Tierra del Sol, took a weeklong agroforestry course with Messerschmidt, and she came away so impressed with the techniques he imparted that she immediately convinced Lavalle, the center’s director, to pivot from the permaculture approach of hugelkultur—raised beds made of rotting logs and other plant debris—to syntropic agriculture. Tierra del Sol’s syntropic garden plot was seeded that same year.

According to Messerschmidt, cultures all over the world have always worked with the forest, planting their crops below the tree canopy and utilizing its abundant natural resources to boost their food production. As an example, he cites a phenomenon known in Brazil as “Indian black earth” or “Indigenous black earth”: a dark, humid soil found throughout the Amazon that’s highly fertile and rich in minerals such as calcium, magnesium and zinc. Once thought to be a natural phenomenon, this black earth is today recognized as the product of some eight thousand years of sustainable, Indigenous Brazilian agriculture, in which native Amazonian tribes domesticated crops such as yucca under a forest canopy of native trees such as cacao and mahogany. 

“For me, agroforestry is doing things as nature does them,” says Messerschmidt. “There’s an intelligence in the forest that we’re simply allowing to unfold.”

Lining paths with pruned material during a work day at Tierra del Sol. (Photo: Lauren Rothman/Modern Farmer)

At workshops, courses, and training all over the world as well as online, instructors including Messerschmidt, Götsch and others are spreading the gospel of syntropy—and people are listening. 

“The demand is growing, and the need for it is even higher,” says Thiago Barbosa, the Australia-based founder of Syntropic Solutions, a designer and developer of agroforestry projects that helps individuals, companies and corporations transition from conventional to syntropic agriculture. Barbosa travels all over the world to teach workshops on agroforestry. He notes that the global interest in the practices is at an all-time high.

“At these workshops, I see more and more people from all walks of life,” he says. “Single moms that just want to have self-sufficiency, farmers who don’t want to spray with chemicals anymore, big corporations that are looking to meet their carbon targets.” In that last category is the cosmetics giant L’Oréal, at whose offices in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Syntropic Solutions planted an edible orchard of native fruit trees.

Using machetes during a work day at Tierra del Sol. (Photo: Lauren Rothman/Modern Farmer)

At Tierra del Sol, there’s evidence—observed both scientifically and anecdotally—that the center’s transition to syntropic agriculture has been a success. Sanchez tells me that, in 2021 and 2022, the garden’s team performed analyses of the soil using chromatography, which demonstrates soil health through markers such as mineral content and the presence of microorganisms. The second samples taken at Tierra del Sol showed increased oxygenation and a higher content of organic material than the year prior, says Sanchez. But the changes at Tierra del Sol can simply be observed with the naked eye—and ear.

“It’s very clear,” says Lavalle. “One of the things you notice, when you’re walking from the neighboring parcels to ours, is that the closer you get, the more birdsong you hear in the morning and the afternoon. There’s a lot more insect activity, too.”

“The fields that surround us—well, you can see how those look,” says Lavalle. “Whereas here, there are bees, there are wasps, there are all kinds of signs to show us that this area is home to more life than it was before.”

The post Syntropic Agriculture Boosts Soil Vitality Using the Wisdom of the Forest appeared first on Modern Farmer.

The car clicker-sized machine relies on spectroscopy, the same kind of light-based technology that astronomers use to determine the composition of stars.

SCiO hasn’t hit the market yet, but the stunning success of the Kickstarter campaign run by Consumer Physics, the company that developed the device, is one indication that the finished product will be in high demand. Within 20 hours of the campaign’s May launch, it $200,000 goal was fully funded; the company quickly announced a new $2 million goal that was met well in advance of its mid-June deadline.

Dror Sharon, CEO and co-founder of Consumer Physics, attributes the campaign’s popularity to the web site’s community feel: On the page, more than 11,000 backers – many of them scientists or techies or both – debate SCiO’s uses and limitations on a comment thread that numbers over 800 entries.

“Kickstarter backers are excited because they know that they will have a real role in bringing this technology to life,” Sharon said. “Without them, the database will not grow and the technology won’t succeed.”

Picking out a juicy plum the old-fashioned way seems simple in comparison to understanding just how SCiO works. The car clicker-sized machine relies on spectroscopy, the same kind of light-based technology that astronomers use to determine the composition of stars. When performing a scan, SCiO’s tiny optical sensor captures the item’s molecular footprint, then measures how those molecules interact with light, creating a barcode-like readout that SCiO’s in-house app converts into the data it sends to your phone.

Because SCiO measures molecules and molecules make up all physical objects, the device has the potential to assess much more than just fruit ripeness. Dror foresees the tool becoming indispensable to farmers and home gardeners, who will be able to use it to assess soil quality and plant health.

“SCiO will measure the plant’s water and macronutrient content,” he said. “This information will optimize growing by helping farmers use accurate amounts of water and fertilizers. Farmers will conserve resources and maximize plant yield, and they’ll also reduce their impact on the environment.”

The device will also help farmers figure out the ideal time for harvesting crops, Dror said, by assessing a fruit or vegetable’s firmness, acid composition and level of sweetness.

Consumer Physics will use SCiO’s Kickstarter campaign funds to ramp up production, and expects to begin distribution early next year. The device will cost $299, and users will likely have to pay a fee to sign up for one of the many apps that developers are creating to be used in conjunction with SCiO: over 600 developers have backed the campaign, Dror said.

It’s hard to imagine needing a machine to complete the familiar errand of going to the store and buying a bag of apples. But though a device like SCiO might seem foreign now, Dror insists that such sensors are the way of the future.

“Long term, when these sensors are ubiquitous, some of our daily habits and routines will change due to the instant information available to us, just as small, low-cost phones equipped with GPS, cameras, and microphones have already changed our lives.”

The post This Pocket-Sized Sensor Will Tell You When Fruit Is Ripe appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Getting rid of feathers would help.

Schmidt’s team, in collaboration with researchers from Iowa State University and North Carolina State University, traveled to both Uganda and Brazil to study birds with featherless necks and heads, an adaptation that allows the south-of-the-equator poultry to throw off additional body heat and stay cool in their scorching native climes. By decoding the bald chickens’ DNA, Schmidt and his colleagues hope to someday have the information needed to crossbreed the bareheaded birds with U.S. poultry, creating a chicken that’s better able to adapt to the warmer American climate of the near future.

By decoding the bald chickens’ DNA, Schmidt and his colleagues hope to someday have the information needed to crossbreed the bareheaded birds with U.S. poultry, creating a chicken that’s better able to adapt to the warmer American climate of the near future.

“We’re going to be seeing heat waves that are both hotter and longer,” Schmidt said. “And we need to learn how to mitigate the effect of climate change on animals – we need to figure out how to help them adapt to it.”

As the planet warms, farmers that raise both meat chickens and egg layers will soon have to deal with the crippling effects of heat stress, and might find the traditional North American breeds – birds like Jersey Giants and Rhode Island Reds – newly susceptible to complications such as higher mortality rates, lower appetite and an increased risk of disease. And with demand for chicken on the rise – in 2015, the Food and Agriculture Organization projects, global production of poultry will top 100 million tons per year and by 2030 will rise to 143 million tons – sick birds are simply not an option on a planet that’s already having trouble raising enough food for its population.

Schmidt samples the DNA of a chicken in Uganda.

“My concern is feeding nine billion people in 2050,” Schmidt said. “That’s going to be a challenge. And it’s going to be made worse if the climate does continue to change.”

In addition to sporting insta-cool featherless heads, the African and South American birds Schmidt is working with are an overall hardy lot whose resistance to other environmental stressors besides heat could also benefit American chickens.

“These are backyard flocks that are exposed to the elements – in Africa, you literally see chickens crossing the street,” Schmidt said. “These birds are under constant selection pressure. What we’re doing is isolating the genetic variants that have allowed them to survive.”

Schmidt’s team’s work is part of a five-year, $4.7 million climate change grant from the National Institute of Food and Agriculture. Three years into the project, the geneticists have gathered just about all the data they’ll need and will spend the next two years analyzing it: mapping the birds’ gene sequences in order to determine the best approach for getting those good, heat-resistant genes into American chickens without taking along all the genetic “baggage,” as Schmidt calls it, that’s unnecessary to duplicate in the hybrid chickens. And although the tools Schmidt’s team utilizes are modern, high-tech and very expensive, the mechanism for creating the heat-resistant birds will be a simple and age-old one: selective breeding.

“I want to make clear that we are not dealing with anything genetically modified here,” Schmidt said. “This is an approach that humans have taken for over 10,000 years.”

“I want to make clear that we are not dealing with anything genetically modified here. This is an approach that humans have taken for over 10,000 years.’

Any breeding of heat-resistant chickens that will take place in the future will be beyond the scope of the University of Delaware’s project, which is responsible only for the gene sequencing and data crunching. But in Schmidt’s projections, naked-necked birds would be bred with American production birds in successive generations, introducing heat-resistant adaptations gradually until, at about ten generations in, the new breed would be “done” and ready to reproduce all on its own. But the process is delicate – and won’t happen overnight.

“Doing this is going to take time,” Schmidt explained. “It could take two decades of research before resulting in any actual chickens.”

Not that the poultry industry – despite strong evidence that climate change is already underway – is in any rush to change things up.

“You talk to farmers today and they’re not concerned,” Schmidt said. “These people are thinking one flock, one generation at a time. But that’s the reason this kind of work needs to take place in an academic environment. Is it important for next year? Probably not. But is it important a decade or so down the line? Absolutely.”

The post Creating Cooler Chickens for a Warming Earth appeared first on Modern Farmer.