In chapter 3 of Healing Grounds, they get into the regenerative agricultural practices coming from the Latinx community and farming traditions. This chapter helped explain how some Mexican and Central American communities have managed to preserve their traditional polycultural methods. These ideologies can enhance biodiversity and soil health and are most often ignored and looked at as the past. Carlisle points out that many farmers or farms in California's Central Valley are seen as "hidden hotspots" of biodiversity. The methods mentioned such as intercropping, composting and cover cropping can all be extremely beneficial to the soil in several ways. This chapter helps us understand the past of the Latinx farming community and how they have been ignored and manipulated over the years. Issues of land dispossession and labor exploitation have been ongoing problems for these communities for many years with no change. Chapter 3 really shows us the importance of embracing, listening to and working with the Latinx community and their agricultural knowledge. The goal is to hopefully push these ideas into the broader field of regenerative agriculture.
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My takeaway from all of these viable polyculture systems is that regenerative agriculture shouldn't be so much about finding a new system, but to change the thought process surrounding agriculture. If we're struggling to find a method of creating an economically viable, sustainable farm structure, why not look further at those who have been able to achieve the best results already?
I believe a big reason why the United States in particular struggles with sustainable farmland is that our larger settler background means that fewer people here have ancestral knowledge of how best to farm the land working WITH the land. I know my lineage and know my earliest ancestors in this continent were farmers. I'm sure Johann Engel in the 1700's was better suited to farm along the Rhine river sustainably than to farm the Schuylkill, because his family and culture had been farming the Rhine for centuries beforehand. It sounds incredibly obvious, but if we try and spread agricultural innovations, we ought to listen most to those who have historic understanding in how to work with the land they are on.
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