Moving forward, looking back: Indigenous agriculture in the Anthropocene

After weeks of steady rain, the forest is lush with green growth and the air thick with humidity. It is late morning, the clouds and mist long burned away from the tropical sun, yet beneath the trees it remains cool. I follow my companions down a muddy path that fades quickly into vines and thick duff: oak leaves and moss, rotting wood; mushrooms. 

Leading us is Alfredo Cortez, Maya-Achi farmer and community leader, who slices his way through the vegetation with his machete. Arriving to a rocky outcrop, he lowers himself to the forest floor and gathers a handful of dark organic material. 

“This is what we’re looking for,” he says. “What we need to bring back with us.”

He holds it where I can see, pointing out the white streaks of mycelium, the level of moisture and decomposition, the smell. 

“Lleno de microorganismos,” he says, dropping it into his bag. 

Full of microorganisms. Countless soil dwellers; bacteria, fungus, yeasts, microscopic predators; all reproducing and dying, eating and defecating, drawing down carbon from the atmosphere and forming complex bonds to the world above. 

It takes us an hour to fill our sacks, ten kilos each. There are three of us: Cortez and Feliciano Acuj, also an Indigenous farmer and leader, and me: a foreign academic and long-time pupil; aprendiendo haciendo. Learning by doing. 

“With bioinsumos,” says Cortez, “we offer farmers an alternative. We don’t just say ‘stop using chemicals,’ and that’s it. We’re giving them an option.”

And a more affordable option it is. As the price for chemical fertilizer skyrockets³, becoming unattainable for poor family farmers and conventional growers alike⁴, microbial-based organic inputs, whether homemade, produced in a group, or bought locally, as explained, are offered at a fraction of the cost. 

But it’s not just about substituting one input for another. According to Acuj and Cortez, along with a growing number of Maya-Achí farmers I speak with, the new practices are hoped to facilitate wider transition towards agroecology: a return to the nature-based and more autonomous agriculture of their parents and grandparents, yet in different contexts altogether. These include unprecedented challenges around water scarcity due to climate change, agrochemical dependency and myriad other issues smallholders confront in defending their livelihoods⁵.

From the forest we walk back along a dirt road to Alfredo’s home and farm, called Pajaro Verde, or the Green Bird. What was only a decade ago a degraded and mostly abandoned plot of land, Pajaro Verde has achieved legendary status as an agroecological vitrina: a showcase for what’s possible in small-scale diversified agriculture, in an area increasingly prone to drought and excessive heat. Over the past few years, I’ve watched it become a regional centre for training, innovation, and recovery of ancestral practices. It is also the unofficial headquarters for their local development group, the Association of Committees for Community Production, or ACPC⁶.

A blue bucket of "la Madre Sólida" which is fermented to promote the growth of micro-organisms and then added to soil to aid in crop growth and pest prevention. Photo provided courtesy of Nathan Einbinder.

Arriving first to his coffee plants – hundreds of bushes grown under leguminous trees, citrus and other fruits – we head to the biofabrica in the far corner of the parcel. One of three micro-processing plants in the territory, the Biofabrica Xesiguan – named after the village and river below – consists of a building and site where bio-inputs are produced, tested on crops, and added to other substrates, such as animal feed. 

With a literal translation of ‘bio-factory,’ biofabricas operate under the logic of enhancing community and individual farmer autonomy. It’s about neighbours working together, sharing and co-creating knowledge, and producing inputs at low budget. It’s also about revaluing labour – especially group work, an ancestral practice – in different ways than prescribed in the capitalist model. 

By now we’re joined by Alfredo’s son, Suarlin, and another youth named William, both university students and agroecology “promotors” for ACPC. They bring in two more sacks of hojarasca – leaf litter – collected beneath a stand of bamboo: “to add greater diversity of beneficial microorganisms,”they tell me. 

We empty our bags onto a tarp on the floor, producing a large mound. At once everyone sits and begins separating and breaking up the material: tossing out larger sticks, crumpling up leaves and other particles, all the while making a closer inspection of mycelium and critters visible to the naked eye. 

The story of how this all came about – how the seeds for the bioinsumo project were sewn – begins nearly a decade ago, on a trip Cortez, Acuj, and other ACPC leaders took to neighbouring Chiapas, Mexico, to visit an organic coffee cooperative. It was there that they saw, for the first time, microbial inputs – just as they are here, in barrels under a tin roof in a remote Mayan village – and heard first-hand accounts about the benefits they provided. These included increased vigour and plant health that provided resistance to la Roya, a fungal disease (Leaf Rust, in English) that all but decimated coffee production across Mesoamerica⁹.

As an observer on the trip, I too was intrigued. The coffee plants appeared healthy and robust, and hardly any money was being spent on providing their nutritional demands. All that was required was knowledge and training, and a bit of investment on materials and labour. That, and an eager farming community to teach one another and spread the methods. 

I remember the lively discussions on our journey home. The new technology was interesting, we all agreed; a bit magical seeming: perhaps too good to be true. Was it realistic to believe that the same bio-inputs could be transferred to their region, given the different contexts and resources they had access to? A key question was support. In Mexico, it was more feasible to attain grants and assistance for this kind of work. But in Guatemala? Their experience with development agencies and particularly the government agricultural ministry, MAGA, was complicated at best, and often involved programmes that ignored their experience as food producers and stripped them of their autonomy¹⁰.

As an agroecologist, I was also sceptical of what seemed like a ‘magic-bullet’ solution to complex problems – with unknown consequences including new dependencies. Aside from that, did they even work? The science on bio-inputs was slim, and controversial (and still is, despite a growing body of evidence¹¹). Other critiques, by scientists and industry, include the inadequacy or “amateurism” of unprofessional farmers to produce high-quality biological inputs in unorthodox and possibly unsterile conditions¹². From an anthropological point of view, I wondered how bio-inputs might interact with traditional or ancestral practices, many of them proven to be efficient and ecological yet continually discredited by agricultural ‘experts’¹³.

It was shortly after that a Cuban academic and educator named Ivan Lenin arrived to Xesiguan, to deliver the first of a series of capacitaciones, or trainings, to local farmers and leaders. 

I was never around to meet Don Lenin, as they called him, and observe his teaching. Though I heard much about his time conviviendo with the Maya-Achí community, and the admiration many had for him. 

“He taught us everything about bioinsumos,” recounts Cortez. “At the same time, he recognized our knowledge and experience and motivated us to innovate. He shared technologies and science that we would have never had access to.” 

The trainings took place over three years and coincided with the construction of the biofabricas and exchanges with other groups across Guatemala.

Cortez and other ACPC leaders jumped at any opportunity to learn more about the new technology and build a network. Soon enough, they were being called upon to deliver their own capacitaciones to other groups, from their centre at Pajaro Verde. 

***

The process takes longer than I thought; breaking up the materials and combining it with ground corn and several litres of molasses diluted in water. There’s no shortage of interruptions either: drop-ins by other farmers, long pauses where they show me other concoctions and manuals they’ve been given, and refacción: a snack of fresh tortillas and cheese, and a warm maize beverage called atol de lote.

“Puro orgánico,” says Acuj, refiling my cup. “Puro microorganismo!”

We conclude by loading the final product, now mildly adhesive and fragrant, into a drum and sealing it airtight. Over the following weeks it will ferment and ‘activate,’ then be used to create the madre líquida. 

We move outside into the sun, which is strong but bearable. In the distance, thunderheads rise quickly into the sky. After more than half a year of drought and record-breaking heat, the rains have been a godsend, bringing life to the forest and fields, and recharging the watershed. 

But how the rainy season will progress is uncertain. Increasing irregularity over the past decade has wreaked havoc on crops. This year, the unseasonable heat and extended dry season caused widespread mortality amongst perennials, coffee included, and a complete halting of dry-season vegetable production. 

But it’s the changes in timing and duration of the canícula, or inter-wet season dry spell, that’s particularly disruptive. Typically lasting a couple of weeks, in recent years the canícula persisted up to two months, effectively drying out arable fields or milpas, the iconic Mesoamerican triad of corn, beans and squash: the mainstay of local diet and culture¹⁵. 

A key element of ACPC’s resilience work, along with improving soil health, is to try and shift production from milpa, which is more vulnerable to drought and typically grown on treeless slopes, to agroforestry – or an unorthodox combination of the two. 

“When I was a kid, everything you see was rastrojo,” or crop stubble, Cortez told me, when we first met. We were on a hillside near his farm looking out at the steep and reforested Xesiguan watershed, where his neighbours had once expanded their fields unsustainably to grow maize¹⁶. 

Pajaro Verde is a living example: a successful family farm, both economically²² and ecologically; mostly forested with coffee, native crops, horticulture; milpa during the wet season, and fully integrated with animals and ponds for aquaculture and water capture. 

The biofabrica is the latest addition, along with space around it for trialling and showcasing the results. 

“No one believes you can grow tomatoes organically – let alone outside a greenhouse,” Suarlin tells me, as we walk upslope to a plot alongside the road. 

Asking why that is, he explains that there’re “too many plagas” – insect and fungal diseases common during the wet season. 

“But here we have an example. With bioinsumos...” 

I can attest the plants look (and taste) great. We harvest a few tomatoes – Romas, typically grown as a cash crop – and eat them on the spot. 

Further down are pepper plants, also abundant and nearly ripe; and beyond that, beans, neatly cropped on small terraces, and dark green in colour.

“And what about other farmers,” I ask. “Are they seeing this?” 

This time it’s William who responds. 

“Everyone attending our workshops sees it; along with the cafetal” – he points to the coffee plants behind us, also receiving bio-input treatments. “People look in from the road as well – every day we receive visitors who want to know more...” 

In addition, there are the commercial farmers, or tomateros, they call them, from the neighbouring municipality of Salama, who’ve been purchasing bottles of madre líquida to experiment as a replacement for chemical fertilizers, which have become prohibitively expensive. 

However, the success of the trials here, as I’m soon to learn, are not as simple as one or two treatments, like you would a conventional fertilizer. Rather, it’s the outcome of a ‘package’ or suite of practices and inputs specific to each crop and stage of growth. It also implies that the soil is “ready to receive” the inputs – meaning it contains adequate organic matter, humidity, and so forth.

“It begins by constructing the cama nutritiva,” or ‘nutrient bed,’ explains Cortez, who’s joined us with his two young daughters, each carrying a basket to harvest vegetables.

This involves taking whatever compost is available and ‘activating’ it with microorganisms. It’s then buried into garden beds, given time to settle and cool, if needed, before planting into directly. 

“This provides all the nutrients and strength for the young plants,” says Cortez. “It also helps with germination and resistance to pests.”

This specific bed contains various mixtures: worm compost, bokashi, biochar – all relatively new introductions, and considered the most potent combination. 

He explains the qualities of each ingredient: the biochar holds moisture; the worm castings provide nutrients; and the bokashi, minerals. 

When asked how the bokashi works, he explains that it’s been “mineralized,” with a caldo or soup of crushed rock providing specific micro- and macro-nutrients. 

This is where bio-inputs cross into the realm of “bio-fertilizers,” typically applied to boost yield²³. The products require non-local ingredients²⁴, which carry both financial and environmental burdens – something that conflicts with the goal of self-sufficiency and falls firmly into the logic of productivism. 

Cortez claims their bio-fertilizers are “superior to chemicals,” as the microorganisms assist in making nutrients available to crops. They also help “restore damaged soils, rather than pollute them.” But the end goal is to find other sources of minerals, like fermented plants such as bananas, rather than imported rock dusts²⁵, which in this instance were provided by the programme²⁶.

A collection of microorganisms for bio-input production sits beneath a stand of bamboo. Photo provided courtesy of Nathan Einbinder.

Continuing our tour, they alternate explaining the different inputs they’ve used and experimented with, depending on what they believe is lacking in the soil²⁷.

“There’s been some trial and error,” says William, mentioning how some crops haven’t responded well to the addition of certain combinations, or too much application which causes a “burning” effect. There can also be an excess of nitrogen, as happens with urea, the common fertilizer, or unprocessed animal manures. 

For pest prevention, they’re convinced that applying copious amounts of beneficial microorganisms has reduced disease and pest damage. 

Yet when pests do arrive – or when consulting farmers who’re experiencing outbreaks – they use M5, a bio-input consisting of a dozen or so “aromatic” plants, like garlic, basil, and native herbs, fermented and applied with or without microorganisms. 

“This is an ancestral practice, innovated,” says Cortez – something I’ve heard multiple times about the techniques. 

“We’ve always used plants as repellents. But now we’re ‘potentializing’ the resource...”

According to Cortez and others, learning about bio-inputs has allowed a deeper understanding of their traditional practices; a more scientific understanding that allows them to find ways to use them more efficiently.

In another example, he explains how “[The] abuelos always collected litter from the forest and spread it onto their fields. They were doing the same thing we are but didn’t understand how it worked. Now we do. And by innovating the resource” – by multiplying the microorganisms through fermentation – “we require a much smaller amount than they did, with greater impact.”

The latter point speaks directly to the present context: less forest and more drought, smaller-size family plots, larger populations. All are factors in driving a perceived necessity of chemical fertilizers²⁸ and incompatibility of ancestral practices, given their reliance on organic matter, knowledge of how to make use of it, and manual labour (which is time-consuming and expensive).

It’s easy to understand their enthusiasm for the new technology: not only does it carry the potential to outcompete agrochemicals, but it also encourages a “revaluing,” as Cortez puts it, of the area’s natural riches and its capacity to enhance agricultural production – a key foundation to ACPC’s work.

Their arguments are compelling – and the evidence in the crops, despite the fact that that the processes are more involved than one might think, is here to be seen.

Yet the effects of their efforts to extend their knowledge and passion about bio-inputs to the greater public remain to be seen. How willing will farmers be to drop or greatly reduce the habit of buying chemical inputs, as they’ve done for decades, for something mysterious and not yet fully proven, with the potential of more labour needed and access to resources? If this scaling and popularisation is successful, how will the technology shape and be shaped by new contexts? Will it be as effective for new practitioners as for current proponents?

The crops, still young, appear healthy – particularly the squash, which covers the ground in thick green leaves. I notice other herbs as well: wild amaranth or bledo, and macuy³¹, a nutritious plant in the tomato family and indicator of healthy soil and, in many cases, composts. 

I ask whether she’s applied chicken manure and receive a nod. 

“And native seeds?” 

“Of course...”

Acuj explains that it’s a trial; usually they use small amounts of chemical fertilizer at specific times. But this year she’ll only use bioinsumos. 

Cortez walks downslope and inspects a sprayer lying against a tree: a plastic backpack with a hand pump, ubiquitous amongst milpa farmers and often gifted by institutions. He picks it up and begins spraying the plants. “MM,” he says, very pleased. 

When I ask Doña Margarita why she’s switched to bio-inputs rather than continue her usual routine she claims it’s the cost. 

“No pisto,” she says. “But thank God Don Alfredo taught us. The plants look the same as with chemicals. But we’ll see, at harvest time...” 

The conversation then turns to Don Francisco, another farmer from La Cumbre, high in the watershed, whose milpa has become a source of debate following a recent viewing by ACPC members. 

“They don’t believe its organic,” says Acuj, holding up his cell phone so I can see the photo: a sea of maize two metres high, with beans climbing up the stalks and mature pines interspersed. 

Cortez explains that there’s still a lot of scepticism about what bio-inputs can do. “We need more evidence,” he says. “More examples like Francisco...” 

For now, their focus is on ramping up production of MMA, along with mineralised bio-fertilizers, to distribute amongst members for trialling this year.

This is another methodology, says Cortez, borrowed from the Green Revolution. “We must ask ourselves: what made it so successful? what worked to get people hooked? We want to offer samples and build more campos of experimentation, like they did. This way, we can outcompete them...” 

Yet it’s clear that gifting only will not be enough. In our next visit with coffee farmer Doña Mercedes, we come across jars of bio-inputs sitting unused on a shelf, which she claims were donated by another group without instructions. We’re also given a brief tour to another biofabrica, which appears mostly abandoned. 

“The technologies were imposed here – not asked for,” Acuj explains. Apparently, biofabricas are sitting empty across the country, where programmes have lacked adequate consultation and teaching methods. The situation brings to mind the countless past introductions and programmes which have failed in the territory for similar reasons, along with critique about bio-inputs (ours included³²) as an unnecessary technology in a region awash with undervalued traditional practices and knowledge. 

Cortez and ACPC promoters stress the importance of accompaniment and bespoke packages that respond to each producer’s needs and capacities. As well as constant reflection on technology and its role in their work. 

“Technology’s great,” I recall Cortez expounding to a group of farmers not long ago. “But one must always question its objective. Is it to benefit producers and the environment? Or to create more consumers and for industry?”

In a similar opinion, Yolanda, a young ACPC leader we visit, affirms that technology is needed in today’s context of interlinking crises. However, it’s the farmers that must be in control of what they adopt and how it’s used. 

“Take for example greenhouses,” she says. “This is a technology that’s helped us women a great deal – and is compatible with our ancestral practices. It’s helped us continue growing our native crops and seeds under different sets of challenges.”

Like other research I’ve done in the territory, analysing drivers of and barriers to agroecology³³, a unifying factor among most farmers I speak with is their perception of crisis and the desire for new ideas to help recover their viability as producers – and the soil.

Yet there are always outliers, who often become equally important in understanding the context and pushing the dial. 

“We’ve planted three thousand trees so far,” he says, walking through his property like we have many times before, pausing at sites where advances have been made: new terraces and crops, ponds, compost pits. When asked why he does it – why they sacrifice so much for such a harsh and unforgiving land – he shrugs. “I love nature,” he says, not without emotion. “And we must restore it, to survive.” 

But the restoration he speaks of isn’t limited to ecology. Chen, who is 47, laments the erosion of ancestral values, for example communal work and self-sufficiency, which many in the community have exchanged for fast-technology, consumerism, and the “American Dream.” 

Critical of development, he blames government and NGO programmes for “breaking our way of producing without chemicals.” This includes the promotion of hybrid seeds³⁵ and pesticides – so-called “paquetes tecnologicos” – which continue “to be gifted in the name of climate adaptation.” 

Echoing Cortez, Chen claims that they’ve lost the “art of being a campesino,” which includes constant experimentation, ingeniousness, and love.

Yet, despite his scepticism of anything imported and so-called modern, he’s not opposed to bio-inputs. Rather, the opposite. 

“We’ve lost our equilibrium,” he says, a common sentiment among many farmers I speak with. “Certain technologies will benefit our ability to recover principles: growing our own chemical-free food, seeds, identity, language; connecting and restoring nature... Bio-inputs are a channel of transition.” 

When asked how the new products and practices might achieve this, he states that “Bio-inputs enhance our autonomy: a threat to the government and corporations. But the trick is innovating nature – this is territorial defence – having control over all our primary resources.” 

Regarding wider-scale adoption he returns to his cynicism: “Ancestral has lost its credibility. ‘Fábrica’ (which translates directly to ‘factory’) is a way to adapt to the times, for better or worse: to attract people sold to the industrial model. It’s a first step: backwards and forwards.”

“And you?” I ask. “Do you use the products?”

He smiles reticently, as he often does when I ask a question, though quickly turns serious.

“I’m planning on it. I’m going to the trainings. Though I don’t want to buy anything. I’ll make my own.” 

***

It’s late in the day, nearly dark, when we return to Pajaro Verde. Sitting over a final coffee, we reflect on past days. Our visits have proven that there is undeniable interest in the technologies and prospects for multiple benefits. Yet still, many questions remain.

What will the future hold, with institutional support set to end this year, leaving ACPC without funds to expand the programme? And how will the season end up – both in terms of the canícula or other potential weather disturbances, and for the farmers expecting immediate results in their milpas? 

And an even larger question, one I hope to get at in years to come: Can bio-inputs, even in the best of outcomes, genuinely improve the viability of Indigenous farmers and their autonomy; reversing the negative trends of migration, reliance on industrial foods, desertification, etcetera? 

Big questions – though not necessarily ones we avoid, even this late in the day. Eternally optimistic, Cortez knows that whatever happens with the programme, this year or next, their struggle will continue, and they will succeed.

“It’s all about working with what we have: that’s agroecology,” he says, time and again. “Knowing and making best use of what’s at hand. Ancestral is knowing we’re part of nature. That we can do anything from supposedly nothing. We fight for this; recovering our values and principles, and we will win.”