Renewing land... and lives

Indigenous farmers are reclaiming their dignity and their land

Oct 06, 2005 - Phil Dahl-Bredine, a Maryknoll Lay Missioner in Oaxaca, Mexico, works with the Center for Integral Development of the Mixteca Farmers (CEDICAM).

It is an organization of indigenous small farmers who live in a mountainous region decimated by erosion, drought and single-crop agriculture.

This area of Mexico is presently struggling with the huge displacement of indigenous campesino/ farmer populations, a situation directly related to the free trade policies of, among others, the U.S. and the World Bank. In the past year and a half, in Mexico alone, these policies have created 1.3 million new poor. CEDICAM assists the local farming communities with efforts that will enhance rural development, renew the land and offer an improved standard of living.

"In spite of everything, it is a time of great hope in southern Mexico, perhaps in all of Latin America… Not only is resistance growing to economic models that are creating poverty, but concrete alternatives are growing, too," writes Phil.

Under CEDICAM's guidance these local farmers have:

• made efficient use of rainwater and increased water supplies and spring flows; the villages of the Mixteca receive less than 20 inches of rainfall annually- new contour ditches now catch 90% of the rain
  
  
• planted over a million native trees here in the past 5 years; new forests are turning the landscape green
  
  
• saved and improved native corn varieties and learned to produce highly effective fertilizers using organic wastes
  
  
• developed cooperative marketing techniques to reach the consumer directly with quality foods that meet the taste preferences of local people
  
  
• diversified plant production to improve family nutrition, soil fertility and family income; returning to the traditional system of companion planting of corn, beans and squash, local farmers are producing more total food per hectare than when they mono-cropped corn.