Articles about "polyculture"

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Monoculture and ecuaro: aspects and genealogies of agricultural modernization in San Miguel Zapotitlán, Mexico.

  • Rubén Cruz Díaz Ramírez

This paper explores the arrangements between humans, non-humans and more than humans generated by the modernization of agriculture in the ejido of San Miguel Zapotitlán, municipality of Poncitlán, Mexico, since the 1950s. The images reveal an agriculture whose genealogy refers to the science of the green revolution and to the practices and knowledge of peasant origin. They show the sympathies and tensions between the traditional and the modern, the local and the global, autonomy and dependence; the monoculture of corn and wheat and the persistence of polyculture (ecuaro) and agrarian religiosity. In addition, they capture how commercial and self-consumption agriculture require "looking": a peasant way of attentive observation of the environment, a practice that new peasants are trying to learn.