Environmental for Food Justice

Imagen de una protesta en el Centro de la Ciudad de México contra la trasnacional Monsanto. Photo by Pablo Ramos. Moderator’s Note: We have been waiting for news on this important case, the latest, and perhaps the last, in a ten-year campaign by Monsanto and its allies to impose transgenic maize products on Mexico. Due process in Mexico is a tangled and lengthy juridical process and Monsanto has exploited the ‘amparo’ rights clause of the Mexican Constitution to prolong and intensify its attacks on Indigenous and peasant farmers. These are the farmers who sustain the living seed libraries of the vital Mesoamerican Vavilov Center of Origin and Diversification of corn among more than three dozen other native crops that literally feed the world. This attack continued through the means of repeated challenges to successful court decisions and rulings verifying the legality of the ban on genetically engineered corn, soy, and other transgenic crops. The underlying rationale of the anti-GMO m...

Land race chimeras from Acequia Institute Seed Library. Crosses in 2015 included Hopi blue flint,  Zuni red flint,  and our local white flint Maíz de concho (Zea mays clibanus).  Photo by Devon G. Peña. Centers of Origin and Diversification of Maíz in the Río Arriba LINKING SOIL, SEED, AND FOOD  IN THE SURVIVAL OF HERITAGE CUISINES Moderator’s Note: This newly revised and edited essay was originally prepared by invitation of the editors, from a tip by Loretta Sandoval, as a contribution to the May 2016 special issue of The Green Fire Times on “Saving New Mexico’s Rare Seeds”. For the on-line version of the essay go to Deep Seeds and First Foods . For the full content of the special issue (Vol 8, No. 5), go to Green Fire Times . I wish to thank Seth Rothman and his colleagues at GFT for convening the authors of the special issue and the opportunity to educate food justice and slow food advocates in New Mexico about the acequia farmers of Colorado’s San Luis Valley a...