We city dwellers are in an interesting spot right now: as food prices seem to steadily climb and certain foodstuffs like rice are in short supply around the world, virtually all we can do is watch.

Sure, now it’s almost summer again we’re transplanting the seedling tomatoes we purchased at Armstrong–and maybe even some corn–but can, or do, any of us raise all our own vegetables?

Elsewhere in the world, of course–in less urbanized societies–people still do, and the New York Times had an interesting piece recently on one such man. He’s Jesús León Santos, a Mixtec Indian farmer from the Mexican state of Oaxaca, which is about 2,000 miles south of Mexico City, the capital.

“The Mixteca highlands here in the state of Oaxaca are burdened with some of the most barren earth in Mexico,” writes the Times‘ Elisabeth Malkin, “the work of more than five centuries of erosion that began even before the arrival of the Spanish colonizers, their goats and their cattle.”

Yet Santos and a few other resolute farmers formed the Center for Integral Campesino Development of the Mixteca, or Cedicam, and they’re determinedly scratching out a living from this dry land.

How? By carving hard hillsides into terraces, by collecting water to irrigate them–replenishing a water table which has been running on empty for years–and by planting certain blends of crops which together ward off disease and pests.

“Mr. León plows with oxen by choice,” Malkin writes. “A tractor would pack down the soil too firmly.” This is one time when the old ways are best. And slowly, after 20 years on the job, he’s making a difference.

“Increased subsistence farming is not the answer to the global food crisis,” Malkin notes. “But people skeptical about the idea that free trade is the best way to reduce hunger point to small-scale projects like Cedicam’s as alternatives to industrialized farming, which is based on costly energy use, chemical fertilizers and pesticides.”

Tags: California, Cedicam, Center for Integral Campesino Development of the Mixtec, Elisabeth Malkin, Jesús León Santos, Long Beach, Mexico, Mixtec Indians, new york times, Oaxaca, Southern California, subsistence farming, The District Weekly, Theo Douglas, traditional farming

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Chris Ziegler 3 months ago 1 point
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check this -- urban farming in usa -- ny times -- it's here too --

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/07/dining/07urba...

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Joe Weinstein 3 months ago 1 point
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'Back to the Land' has an important topic, but sadly the article is just another well-intentioned example of filler 'journalism of the quaint'.

Indeed, the article is blithely oblivious to or erroneous on basic fact. For one thing, Oaxaca state is NOT 2000 miles from Mexico City, nor even 500 miles airline.

And just because people 'elsewhere' are 'still' growing their own food (gee-whiz) does not entitle journalists to imply by omission that people who are doing it right here in California (urban, not to mention rural too) don't exist or don't count or aren't interesting enough, or have nothing to teach us.

In particular, why no mention of Long Beach Organic?! - or aren't they quaint enough or yuppie enough or New-York-Times enough or third-world enough to merit mention, let alone interviews?

So - (big discovery?) - subsistence farming is not 'the' answer to feeding the world's population? Can there be any answer at all - let alone a single big 'the' answer - so long as population is allowed to grow indefinitely?

According to the quoted Malkin, some people are actually skeptical about 'free' trade or industialized farming. Imagine! The sound reasons for the skepticism, go far deeper than a single NYTimes filler piece. For some accessible but solid reading of them, see for instance the first section of Michael Pollan's 'The Omnivore's Dilemma'.

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