Featured Guest Blog | Loretta Acuña Sandoval on Native Chile Peppers and Being Connected to Plants

Illustration by Julie Notarianni | Courtesy
of Yes
Magazine.

Moderator’s Note: Our guest blog today is by a scientist who long has worked with New
Mexico and Colorado acequia farmers to protect the native landrace chile
peppers of the Rio Arriba (Upper Rio Grande) watershed. For many years, she
worked closely with the late much beloved Estevan Arellano; Sandoval has a farm
in Dixon not far from the Arellano family’s permaculture operation in Embudo
Cañon. I am delighted that Ms. Sandoval has agreed to will share old and new
posts with followers and readers of this blog as a featured guest contributor.

The work that Ms. Sandoval
has engaged in over the past two decades focuses on unifying scientific
methodologies with local knowledge and practices followed by acequia farmers,
plant breeders, and seed savers. Her work is thus a vital part of the
indomitable seed sovereignty movement, which works from the grassroots up to
protect, defend, and preserve farmer control over our heritage seeds and
agroecological methods.

This also explains why autonomous seed sovereignty work – that
is, seed saving and plant breeding work done in situ and in vivo and without
directly collaborating with the cooperative extension services or the official
‘gene banks’ operated by the USDA – is often the target of institutional
interlopers who seek to appropriate and use this knowledge (and germplasm) to
serve their own ends instead of addressing the needs of farmers. Qua: Biopiracy by another name. This is
all the more significant given current continuing efforts at New Mexico State
University to develop GMO chile peppers; see story in Santa
Fe Reporter and our previous reports on this issue (post from 2010
and an interview with Edible
Radio.

The work Sandoval does
resonates deeply with the the Acequia Institute: We are farmers following a
grassroots path, outside the mainstream top-down sphere of agricultural
extension, by creating alter-institutions
that are directed by and serve the research and development needs of acequia
farmers, plant breeders, and seed savers; all without ceding control of our
germplasm and knowledge to state and federal agencies.

I note Sandoval remembering where each plant in her garden was. That is a memory we should all cultivate as we connect to the seeds and plants that feed our bodies and souls.

The original was posted to Green
Fire Times, a well-known and respected on-line magazine that covers
agriculture and environmental themes in New Mexico. It is a highly recommended
zine.

The landrace peppers of New Mexico
and familia

Loretta
Acuña Sandoval | Dixon, NM | January 14, 2016

I was a farmer long before I
understood the importance and power of raising food. And I’m not talking about
the mainstream political power necessarily of someone setting agricultural
policy and deciding which programs get funding and which do not. I started my
first garden in Southern Colorado near Pueblo in 1969, and although it was
small, I can still close my eyes and remember where each plant was.

For some reason I can do
that for most of the gardens I have cultivated in my lifetime. I finally
understand it is because I was connected with the plants that I nurtured. Being
a farmer is powerful in a reason that is in plain sight. We are raising food
for people, and believe me, it is not an easy life of say, dodging the press,
wearing designer shoes or being careful what you say. 

The land race peppers used to make famous

Chimayo red chile powder are threatened by extinction.

It is getting up
sometimes at 4 am after going to bed at midnight. It is working on Sundays or
other times because your plants need something. It is an imperfect life but yet,
being so close to the Earth, and personally being in tune with the weather
cycles of rain or, God forbid, hail and drought, is perfect. 

Being a steward of
both land and seed, I finally understand it is not about boasting about how
much more business I may have than my fellow vendors at a farmers market. It is
about passing along precious resources such as the seed banks of landrace
peppers that are currently endangered i New Mexico.

Landrace chile peppers
(Capsicum annuum var. annuum, Family Solanaceae) are descendants of chile
peppers historically taken through the Spanish and Portuguese trading routes in
the time period of 1492 to 1590 . It is believed that the Spanish brought the
landrace peppers to New Mexico from Mexico in the late 1500’s to early 1600’s . 

They
are called landraces because the peppers are grown and collected by individual
families, and these specific “races” are tied to the land area where they
have been grown for decades or hundreds of years. 

The areas where farmers
still grow the landraces are Northern New Mexico in high elevation villages
(approximately 6,000 feet above sea level) that have very secluded fields and
short growing seasons. The peppers are an important part of both the indigenous
Native American tribes and Indo-Hispano diet in New Mexico. Some of the reasons these
heirloom peppers are believed to still be intact is because of the careful
nurturing and collection by area farmers, and the secular small field sizes
(less the 1 ha).

In Southern Colorado our
landrace, which is called a “Mirasol” (pointing to the sun) pepper, is near
extinction, and I still look in all the small villages east of Avondale for it.
This landrace is really interesting because there is virtually no trace of the
plant genetics here in New Mexico according to Paul Bosland’s research at New Mexico
State University , even though the Spaniards (or the Mesoamerican farmers that accompanied them) were believed to have brought it
here hundreds of years ago. 

They may have just traveled straight through to
Colorado with it but no one really knows. It was used for an open-pollinated
cultivar breeding program years ago that was just abandoned last year and taken
out of the catalogs. 

What happened was this new “improved” Mirasol, according
to the locals, succumbed to disease pressure and was not performing well in the
large fields near Pueblo. The locals mentioned it had seedling sizes in the
field that varied greatly, and about 30-40% would die from one thing or
another, which I understood as an unstable seed bank population. 

In New Mexico, we are
approaching the point where the history in Colorado may repeat itself. Farmers
as stewards of this seed have begun and must continue to work together. In
Colorado, stewards there are beginning to work with us to conserve these farmer seed libraries. 

Three of us wrote a grant to begin on-farm research and educational
programs to help in the conservation of the landrace peppers. If funded, we
will have the opportunity to work with area farmers and breeders to strengthen
and understand where these in vivo seed libraries are still being cultivated. We work
with the elderly of the traditional farmers to learn the old ways of planting
the landraces and preserve and protect this place-based knowledge.

I am currently writing yet
another grant seeking funding for our research. Working with others who are
passionate about landrace protection is not always an easy task. Fear and egos
sometimes get in the way as well as the blame game. All the while, as much as
we do not want to think about it, the big M [Moderator note: NMSU] is watching us bicker, and waits
like a thief in the night. These are brave farmers in New Mexico though, and I believe
we will work all this out in time. I feel fortunate to work alongside these hardy
souls, and I will keep working to protect our resources.

The truth is as an
individual I know I am traveling through this history of New Mexico and I am grateful
to be here where my father and mother were raised. Just to understand what
their life was like at the turn of the last century; my father was a
sheepherder back in the day. This seed, it is our history and that of the
farmers who follow us. 

As much as I do not understand it or may not even be
prepared for it, I will not be here forever; none of us will. But if I take
care of this seed in my possession, it may still be here for hundreds of years.
I know the land will be here long after I am gone, and I understand I must care
for it; but the seed, that is a different story. 

How does one or a group of
humble farmers deal with a runaway train such as genetically modified crops? I
can only speak for myself and remember all those stewards of the landrace
before me cultivating this seed, such as Elvidia, now in her 90’s, who told me
her stories about the very landrace I am stewarding, and the 500 ristras she
made in her youth one summer. When I take her the pods every summer and see her
face light up, I know I am on the right path. And I think, if her father and my
father didn’t give up and neither did she, then I will not either. And I will
protect this seed on my watch no matter whom or what comes my way.