{"id":15722,"date":"2013-06-25T08:19:39","date_gmt":"2013-06-25T14:19:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress-367309-1145705.cloudwaysapps.com\/?p=15722"},"modified":"2017-08-08T13:05:55","modified_gmt":"2017-08-08T17:05:55","slug":"agriculture-environment-new-mexico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sustainablog.org\/articles\/agriculture-environment-new-mexico\/","title":{"rendered":"Harvesting Justice 19: “The Revolution is Going to be Fought With The Hoe”- Agriculture and Environment in New Mexico"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"cleaning<\/a>
Spring cleaning of the acequia that irrigates Sol Feliz farm. Acequias are a traditional irrigation system used through much of New Mexico, and managed democratically by the community. Photo by Miguel Santistevan.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By Beverly Bell and Tory Field<\/strong><\/p>\n

Part 19 of the\u00a0Harvesting Justice series<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re surrounded by agricultural land but we have no food security<\/a>. Right now we\u2019re strapped to the global market,\u201d said Miguel Santistevan, a New Mexican farmer and biologist. \u201cSome people are trying to figure out how to set themselves free and are showing other people. It\u2019s as if we were all tied to a train that\u2019s headed off a cliff, and pretty soon a lot of us are saying, \u2018Hey, I\u2019m going to jump off this train before it goes.\u2019<\/p>\n

Miguel and his partner Margarita Garc\u00eda are helping youth reclaim knowledge about traditions behind lands and waters. Sol Feliz Farm<\/a>, Miguel\u2019s grandfather\u2019s house east of Taos, is an acre of spiral gardens, rock gardens, and straight rows. The farm\u2019s Agriculture Implementation Research and Education (AIRE) project is capturing the imagination of an impassioned group of youth in northern New Mexico. At AIRE, the youth get to engage in everything from planting seeds to plucking chickens to visiting the state legislature. On any given morning during the summer, you can find the youth irrigating the field, using the traditional acequia<\/em> method of diverting flowing water to the land via hand-dug channels.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou figure maize agriculture, 10,000 years of agricultural evolution, at least,\u201d Miguel said, \u201cand we\u2019re losing all that cumulative knowledge.\u201d Miguel is a walking encyclopedia about plants and water, but not the type of encyclopedia you\u2019d find in any local library. \u201cPeople try to put together equations. \u2018Oh, well, you have this many acres and this much corn, and corn requires this much water, so you\u2019ve got to irrigate this many times.\u2019 And I say, \u2018Dude, nature doesn\u2019t work that way. Go talk to the Hopi about how much water corn needs.\u2019 I know an elder Hopi who said, \u2018It doesn\u2019t even need to rain. A cloud just needs to fly overhead.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cAll these people think that, dammit, this system has to conform to the mathematics of engineers, lawyers and economists, with the help of politicians. That\u2019s why I like working with youth, because the youth don\u2019t buy it. They buy a lot of it: this rap music, and the gangster stuff, and the drug subculture. When it comes to what\u2019s happening to the mountains, what\u2019s happening to the rivers, what\u2019s happening to the elders, they don\u2019t buy it. Some kids are saying, \u2018Oh well, the world\u2019s gonna end anyways. The older generation, they already destroyed the planet. Might as well just party, have a good time.\u2019 But other kids are saying, \u2018How\u2019re we going to fix it?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cOur part in this process is not just about social change and justice, it\u2019s also about food production and how do we feed ourselves.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe other day, we were harvesting corn. Some of these kids are on probation, getting in trouble in school, dropping out of school. Just to see that look on their faces and the wonder as they\u2019re opening that corn up, just amazed at the sight of the kernels, the color\u2026 it was awesome. That wonderment, that\u2019s how we\u2019re going to get to the next stage.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other New Mexicans are focused on creating a \u201cregional foodshed<\/a>,\u201d a local food ecosystem that bases its boundaries on ecological parameters like water flow, rather than on arbitrary state lines. One important contributor to rebuilding the foodshed along the Rio Grande Valley is La Monta\u00f1ita Co-op food market. A 37-year-old store with five locations throughout the state, one of La Monta\u00f1ita\u2019s slogans is \u201cfair fresh local.\u201d<\/p>\n

The ecosystem dictates what the co-op sells, said Robin Seydel, membership coordinator. \u201cWe want to utilize all the eco-climes up and down the Rio Grande Valley.\u201d Currently, 20% of the store\u2019s sales come from more than 1,500 different items produced by nearly 900 local producers. The goal is to increase that to 50%. The co-op\u2019s local production coordinator develops plans with farmers to increase the diversity and seasonality of local foods. \u201cThat way we\u2019ll have quinoa from Southern Colorado, chili from New Mexico,\u201d said Robin. La Monta\u00f1ita also provides training in land-stewardship practices and product improvement, and negotiates pre-payment on some contracts to help out struggling farmers.<\/p>\n

Over the past few years, as Robin and others at the co-op watched many local farms go out of business, they realized that a major challenge for farmers \u2013 especially given the skyrocketing cost of gas \u2013 was transporting their products to market. The co-op now leases a refrigerated truck to bring local goods to its stores, like milk from one of the only two dairy farms in the state that still produces and bottles milk for local consumption.<\/p>\n

Some other pro-agriculture, pro-environment initiatives in New Mexico include:<\/p>\n