Organic Farming in San Juan Colorado, Oaxaca

Margaret MacSems is the sales person and customer service at Gorilla Glass. When she is not in the office she is doing her passionate work, helping a rural community develop a sustainable organic farming collective In San Juan Colorado, Oaxaca, Mexico. For the second year in a row, they have won funding from the Harp Helu foundation. Congratulations Margaret! We are proud of you and the community of San Juan Colorado. Here is some more info in her own words...

"San Juan Colorado is a mainly indigenous, mixtec-speaking town nestled in steeply rolling hills an hour’s drive up and away from the Pacific coast of Oaxaca. Here most people are still dependent on their corn harvest in order to keep food on the table. Though poor in economic terms the community is rich in natural resources and cultural traditions including pre-Hispanic spiritual rituals, post-colonial folk dances and back-strap loom weaving.

I began working on sustainable community and agricultural development in San Juan at the end of 2008. I had been there in 2006 doing research for my master’s thesis and decided to go back and put into action what I had studied and learned in the International Agricultural Development master’s program at the University of California Davis.

The general thrust of the project is to increase the capacity of community leaders (farmers, weavers and would-be administrators) to understand, imagine differently and solve their basic food and economic needs in socially, culturally and environmentally sustainable ways.

We have been focused on developing farmer to farmer education with an emphasis on the use of green manures (nescafé). The training that we have been providing so far also includes learning to make bio-pesticides and fertilizers, constructing field terraces and live plant barriers to reduce erosion, sustainable animal husbandry and pasture management, seed saving and small farm management.

In the second phase of the project we are working with the weavers (all women). San Juan is a site of origin for naturally colored brown cotton (coyuche). These artisans are well-known throughout Oaxaca for their weaving, but in recent years they have all but lost the seeds to grow the native cotton. We are now in the process of rescuing the seed from near extinction and also introducing appropriate technologies for processing the cotton into yarn and thread.

The link between the two aspects of the work is applying sustainable agriculture technologies to both food and cotton production and educating the farmers and their families on the sustainability of biodiversity, crop rotation and the need to balance growing crops for sale with crops for household consumption.

We are pleased to have been selected in November, 2010 for the second time, to receive funds from the Alfredo Harp Helu Foundation, Oaxaca."

If you are interested in knowing more about the project or purchasing our natural cotton or weavings, please don’t hesitate to contact me at: 530-419 5191 (California phone number) or mdmacsems@gmail.com.