Chapter 3 - Thoughts

  There is a common group called the “three sisters” which contains squash, beans, and corn. This is often represented as a piece of folklore and is commonly referred to as the Milpa. However, Carlisle treats it with the political and scientific respect it deserves, framing it as a carbon-sequestering technology rather than a garden patch. 

Milpa relies on a relationship-based design. Rather than using chemicals to kill all of the weeds, the Milpa works through cooperation. The corn provides a trellis for the beans to climb, the beans pull nitrogen from the air and put it into the soil, acting as a natural fertilizer, and the squash creates a living mulch with its big leaves that regulate soil temperature and help to prevent weeds. A healthy Milpa can contain tons of species, including plants that modern farmers would dismiss as weeds. Such a diverse ecosystem can withstand pests and droughts that would wipe out a monoculture field.

Carlisle then links the Milpa to the lived reality of Mesoamerican migrants. Ancestral seeds are often carried across borders, often in the face of hardship. In these communities, the Milpa is used as a form of cultural resistance. Growing Milpa is seen as an act of claiming an identity. The farmers are refusing to conform to the food system rather than erase thousands of years of botanical knowledge. 

Regenerative agriculture often repackages Indigenous knowledge as “innovation” while those who had guarded that knowledge are marginalized by the agricultural policies claiming to be fixed. Milpa is not possible without the people. By abandoning the philosophy and just adopting the technique, we are just practicing a new form of colonialism. The Milpa is a social contract between land, people, and ancestors rather than just a planting guide. We need to start looking at the relationships between things rather than just the techniques used. Laboratory chemicals are not needed to feed the world, instead we need to support small-scale farmers who already know how the work with the natural cycles on the planet.