Milpa for Life: Indigenous Farmers Strengthen Integrated Farm Systems

Like many of the farmers in his small community near Colonia Yucatán in Eastern Mexico, José Eliseo Uicab Ay rises before the sun comes up. He sets out from his home, traveling almost two miles down a narrow, tree-lined path to his milpa, a tract of land for cultivating crops amid the surrounding subtropical jungle endemic to the Yucatán peninsula.

Milpa, a word derived from the native Náhuatl language, refers to the traditional Mayan farming system of planting several crops in a forested area. At his milpa plot in rural Mexico, José grows the trifecta of produce long practiced in Indigenous Mayan milpa agriculture — corn, beans and squash — alongside watermelon, tomato, zucchini and a medley of fruit trees, including papaya and Persian limes. Nine Mexican Creole hairless pigs and a few sheep roam the property, feeding on the dried corn stalks from the plants José has already harvested for their fruit.

Like many of the smallholder farmers in this region, José remembers first helping his own father on his milpa when he was only 9 years old. But the addition of the Mexican Creole hairless pigs is relatively new. Two years ago, José connected with Heifer Mexico and began implementing improved animal management and sustainable crop production techniques to boost his yield and income.

“With the training we received, we’ve been able to increase our cultivation from 580 kilograms to over a ton of corn per hectare. And we feel the benefits for both crops and animals,” said José, a 35-year-old father of three young boys. “Increasing our corn production also means improving the reproduction of our livestock. I've learned how to manage the field in a way that helps both.”

José and his family are one of over 2,000 farming families currently supported by Heifer Mexico through the Milpa for Life project. The three-year initiative, funded by the John Deere Foundation, trains smallholder farmers in Yucatán and Campeche on best practices to improve milpa productivity, household income and sustainably managed land. Key to these efforts include integrating natural fertilizers for better crop yields without damaging the health of the land and proper animal well-being training.

Today, José leads by example in his rural community, showing others there’s a direct link between sustainably managed land, healthy animals and the nutrition and food security of his own family.

The Milpa for Life project aims to alleviate the compounding obstacles smallholder farming households face — hunger from underproduction, poor nutrition from a lack of animal-sourced proteins and often meager income from a lack of market access.

These efforts are particularly important in Mexico, where around a quarter of the population lives in rural areas but represents roughly two-thirds of the extremely poor. For Indigenous populations, the disparities are even starker: 61 percent of Mexico’s Indigenous population is extremely poor, compared to only 19 percent of the non-Indigenous rural population.

For many of these families, working the land for only paltry income drives many to uproot their lives and migrate elsewhere in search of better livelihood opportunities. Projects like Milpa for Life, which target improved productivity at the farm level, can help alleviate that pressure, allowing farmers to stay in their home communities.

"We know from research that growth in the agricultural sector can boost incomes of poor families two to four times more effectively than other industries,” said Marlen Rubio, Signature Program lead for Heifer Mexico. “Our efforts here are in line with this ethos. We believe smallholder farmers are best placed to feed themselves and their communities as a mechanism to overcome poverty and hunger.”

“With the training we received, we’ve been able to increase our cultivation from 580 kilograms to over a ton of corn per hectare. And we feel the benefits for both crops and animals.” — José Eliseo Uicab Ay

In rural Mexico, tending to the milpa and the corn, beans, and squash is not just a matter of livelihood and family food security; it’s also linked to identity. Growing corn, beans and squash in tandem has long proven nutritionally significant due to the crops’ mutually beneficial properties. Mesoamericans selectively bred maize to have strong stems to support climbing beans, allowing them access to light. The beans, in turn, fix nitrogen in the soil, trapping a vital nutrient for plant growth. And the squash plants’ broad leaves shade the ground, reducing moisture loss and preventing weed growth.

“It is something beautiful, this experience, that people in the community have seen and admire the change on our farm,” said José. “Many people told us that they see the opportunity I have — to live and work on our production in this way — and that they feel it is also within their reach.”

Hilaria Poot Dzul , a 37-year-old milpa farmer from the same community, was one such observer. Before connecting with the Milpa for Life project, she often struggled to cultivate sufficient corn to feed her family and struggled to grow it in a way that preserves, instead of depletes, her plot of land.

Many smallholder farmers face this challenge, contending with an increasingly unpredictable climate that can hamper harvests and threaten food security. The use of chemical fertilizers or pesticides, though often effective in the short term, causes long-term damage to the fertility of the soil and the health of the livestock that consume fodder grown on chemically treated land.

“By using natural fertilizer, we can help the Earth,” said Hilaria, who farms with her husband and learned how to develop chemical-free fertilizer through the Milpa for Life project. “This way we feed the plants, but we also save money by no longer buying the [chemical products]. We make the natural fertilizer and apply it to the stalk of the plants, and it has led to improvements.”

Bolstering her family’s economic resilience has come hand in hand with increasing her ability to rely on their production to meet her family’s nutritional needs. Hilaria recalls the anxiety she used to experience, having to purchase corn from a traveling vendor years ago and the toll it would take on their savings.

“We used to have to buy it and we'd always purchase less than we needed because it was so expensive,” she said. “Now we can go to the cornfield, harvest the maize, and prepare it ourselves, to give to our children. That is the biggest difference.”

To date, targeted interventions from the project have led to increased milpa productivity by an average of 75 percent, from 630 to 1,100 kilograms per hectare, or roughly 1,390 to 2,425 per 2 ½ acres. Family farmers, including Hilaria and José, have harvested a total of over 216,000 kilograms of native maize.

As a woman in agriculture, this is of particular importance for Hilaria. Despite constituting 43 percent of agricultural workers worldwide, women often lack access to the training and tools required to maintain their family’s food security and grow their agribusinesses. With proper support and equitable access to resources as their male counterparts, women could feed an additional 150 million people, according to the Food and Agricultural Organization.

For Hilaria, the newfound connection between healthy crops and healthy livestock has transformed her family’s day to day. She has corn to harvest for tortillas to feed her children, squash for her backyard chickens and beans for a hearty meal.

Today, she dreams of further expanding her production and, as a result, her family’s prosperity.

“My hope is this collaboration continues so I can improve the quality of our lives for our entire family, our sons and daughters,” she said. “It's very important, this change. It has helped us economically more than anything.”