Biointensive Gardening

A grant funded by the rotary Foundation, the Los Altos Rotary Club and Club Rotario Nuevas Generaciones of Merida.

A new PI project for 2009/2010 providing biointensive farming workshops for up to 75 local farmers from our villages taught by Proyecto Itzaes International Director Simon Clopton. Gardening and food production has significant cultural and historical meaning in Maya villages. In the past several years as our young students participated in the diabetes prevention project and interviewed many of their elders about food and farming, they realized how this knowledge was being lost within their own families and villages.

Milpa agriculture is an integral part of Maya and Mexican culture and a healthy and sustainable healthy lifestyle. The three sisters: corn, beans, and squash have long been the dominant garden foods in Maya gardens, along with locally specialized cilantro, chives, and radishes and families are eager to revive their garden traditions.

In 2009/2010 participating families attend workshops over several months to learn how to organically and sustainably increase food production on their ejido lands. Each receive a Spanish language copy of John Jeavons’ book Cultivo Biointensivo de Alimentos.

This permaculture organic farming course will provide the crops and other products for a farmers’ market — a second rotary foundation project funded with the Palo Alto Rotary and Club Rotario Nuevas Generaciones for 2010/2011.  The farmers’ market  model will  attract  people from Merida and surrounding villages who wish to purchase organic, local and heirloom foods, as well as enjoy a day of family fun and local  arts and crafts. For the PI farmers and families, this will  mean that they  will receive the full value of their crops and not have to sell to food dealers at unfairly low prices. Equally as important, the market will celebrate the work of the community and showcase the families and their community based hard work.