Mexican Youth Turn To Urban Agriculture To Connect With Their Roots
When the pandemic disrupted livelihoods and supply chains, young urban Mexicans decided to learn to grow food themselves.
By Aline Suárez del Real, Adriana Alcázar González
Global Press Journal
August 22, 2022
Excerpt:
Growing up in a concrete city of more than 5 million people, María de Lourdes Félix never thought she would harvest corn and worry about worms.
But during the pandemic lockdown in March 2020, the 32-year-old enrolled in an online three-month economics course offered by Instituto Mexiquense de la Juventud, a Mexican government agency. Inspired, 10 classmates started a project to plant and harvest corn, calling themselves Maizkali. They borrowed a piece of farmland that had been in one of their families for generations.
The members harvested their first crop in November 2021 — then had to spend several days cleaning it, after discovering that they had stored it incorrectly and left it vulnerable to vermin. This was just one of many lessons learned by returning to the earth, Félix says.
“We would like more young people to realize that caring for and valuing the countryside is important, even in this place where there seems to be no reason to do so anymore,” she says. “Working the fields represents not only an economic alternative but also has to do with recovering forms of organization and cosmovision.”
After more than two years of the pandemic, younger generations of urban Mexicans have found unexpected inspiration in more traditional ways of life. Although this trend was brewing before 2020, the lockdowns inspired more interest in the origins of food and clothing, and how to survive without modern conveniences.
