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Second Annual Fair of the Mixteca Milpa
Organized by CEDICAM: Center for Integral Campesino Development of the Mixteca
My name is Jesús León Santos.
I am the coordinator of the Sustainable Agriculture Program at CEDICAM.
CEDICAM works with 30 communities here in the region, approximately 950 families.
We do diverse activities in agriculture, soil conservation, rain-water harvesting,
seed saving, etc. These are the main areas that the Center works in.
La Milpa A Productive System that Sustains Life
The Milpa is a system that the Meso-American peoples developed,
in which you can integrate a range of plants.
It's a plant guild that features mainly corns, beans, and squashes, but also can
include edible herbs, greens, amaranth, tomatoes, and other plants in the system.
So it's a system that can really be resistant to many environmental factors.
In these last years it's been marginalized by the modern agricultural systems.
But for us, it keeps representing an efficient system
that is in accord with the times of today...
These times of climate change, problems in food security, etc...
The Milpa is a system that can respond to these problems.
The Fair of the Milpa
This fair has the focus of sharing and promoting the importance of the Milpa,
and to share the fact that the Campesinos have in their hands a productive system
that is really important, that contributes to the protection
of the environment, that contributes to the community's food security,
but most important, we recognize that the people's traditional knowledge is really important.
This one we plant in the rainy season. It starts around May, June,
when the rains come, we plant.
And this one is in February. Around February 20 we plant this one.
This corn cob is not chemical, it's organic. We want it to be organic, natural,
that the plant be natural to eat it. That's why we grow organic.
There's no need to use fertilizers. The fertilizers are the organic composts, from animals.
We want to fight the chemical agriculture, and grow naturally...
corn, beans, radishes, everything, natural, without putting fertilizer.
Because the fertilizers are finishing us. The fertilizers are finishing us.