Chinampas are the Future

Thank you, Rosio. It's an honor to be presented by Rosio, of course. Firstly, thanks, Matt. Thanks, Laura. I don't know where she is. Laura Cabrera. Thanks, Eat Wasted crew who told me this could be something possible, you know, me standing in front of you speaking in MAD. But, yeah, let's begin. Do you know anywhere on the planet where humans have made nature better, stronger, healthier? Well, I do. And it's called the chinampas. These are the chinampas, an ancient technology or an ancient farming system with a history of more than 4,000 years. And we are built in what's now known as Mexico City, the heart of the Aztec civilization. In order to understand how the chinampas were built, you need to know that Mexico City is built on top of five lakes surrounded by active volcanoes. So, yeah, it's a very special place to be in. And the chinampas were built on the shallow waters of such lakes. You know, these are the chinampas. You know, these are the chinampas. They all have a similar design. It's a rectangular design with a ahuejotes, which are the sacred willows on the perimeter. And they route the chinampas to the earth, you know. Sometimes they're called floating gardens, but they're not floating. And they were built with organic matter. Then they put the willows on the ground. And they're built on the edges. Then the seeds, you know, flowers, herbs, the three sisters. It's a milpa, you know. But one of the most important things about the chinampa design or architecture is that when they built them more than 4,000 years ago, around 4,000 years ago, they realized that by multiplying the edges, they multiplied life. So they created this canal system, you know. And this is a real picture of a majestic primary canal. There are primary, secondary, and tertiary canals in the chinampas. The chinampas were perfected around 2,000 years ago by the Xochimilcas. But their golden age was reached around 1400s till 1600s in the peak of the Aztec Empire. Just for you to imagine the size of the chinampas in that moment in time. They were around 250 square kilometers long. And the population was around one and a little less than one and a half million, you know. So it's, they were actually twice the size of this city property, you know, Copenhagen. But then everything changed. The conquest came to Mexico with all its good things and with all its bad things, of course. And there was a shift in the cosmovision. They dried up the lakes. Instead of playing with water and making it their biggest asset, they just dried it up. There was a deep disconnection with nature, you know. And then, of course, the scientific and industrialization revolution arrived with all its good and bad things. And the possibility of exploiting land became something real. So instead of seeing soil or land as a nourishing mother or as identity or the home of our non-human kinfolk, it started to be property, commodity, resource extraction. And then, the city that was built, and the city that was built on top of five lakes became from this to this. This to this. This to this. And now, we only have less than 10% of the chinampa system surviving. Less than 10% of the surviving chinampas are used to produce food. And more than 60% of the Chinampas are abandoned. And the biggest problem of abandonment of chinampas is that the city starts to devour the chinampas once they're abandoned. So the chinampas are on the verge of disappearance. But by telling you all this, I want to ask you, what do you feel is so special about the chinampas? You know? Like, few experiences are as magic as the city. It's magical as going through the canals of Xochimilco in the sunrise, just watching the sun come out behind the volcanoes. It's truly magical. It's a perfect antidote to the disconnection. We have as city dwellers for the cycles of nature. It has a magic ability to reconnect us with the rhythms of life. The design of the chinampas is similar to that, or it reminds me of the honeycombs or the coral reefs, because it's nature at its best. You know, it's humans at its best. When we are at our best, we build chinampas. It's a perfect design for agriculture, of course, because it's maximum biodiversity for maximum productivity. It also shows us this sensibility that chinamperos have when they build them with the principles of minimal effort, with maximal impact, you know, because they use this organic material, local material. But what really sets the chinampas apart from any other ecosystem is that they show us that as humans, we have a regenerative power in nature. You know, even for city dwellers, as me, I live in Mexico City, or as many of you, that we are afraid of our destructive power, destructive power, since everything that has been happening for years and years, the chinampas give us faith. They show us that there is another way. You know, many people say we should just be wild. We should just stay away from nature, just let nature by itself. But the chinampas teach us something deeper. They teach us that we should intervene. That we must intervene. Because as humans, our goal is to guide ecosystems through a process of more complexity, organization, and regeneration. You know, the chinampas wouldn't exist if it wasn't for the chinampero, the peasant farmer that built the chinampas. They're connected with nature cycles. And the chinampas. And the chinampas. And the chinampas also have this ability to make us angry. They have this ability to make us feel frustration, of course. Because they show us the deep neglect there is for peasant farmers. They show us the fracture there is between the urban and the rural. And like Teresa Rojas says, you know, without chinampa, there is no... Without chinamperos, there are no chinampas. They work from sunrise till sunset. They are badly paid. They are looked down upon. It's their sweat that makes flowers and plants grow. It's not the water from the chinampas. You become a chinampero out of necessity or out of stubbornness or maybe out of both, you know. And then we ask ourselves, you know. And then we ask ourselves, why are there no more chinamperos or peasant farmers? How can we make younger generations engage, you know? When a chinampero dies, another one is not born. The fate of Mexico City is linked to the fate of the chinampas. Maybe even the fate of the whole humanity. What if by recovering collectively the chinampas, we find out that the only path forward to face a collective crisis we have upon us is through cooperation? Or like Ernst Götsch says, what if by doing it, we become a species loved again by the rest of the natural world? Like I said before, without chinamperos, there are no chinampas. But without peasant farmers, there's no life, there's no civilization, there's no earth. So for us in Arca Tierra, the peasant farmers, campesinos, are the guardians of the earth. And they are the most important people in society because they are on the front lines of the solutions to our world's biggest collective crisis. Before I go deeper into Arca Tierra, I want to ask you, what do you feel when you hear the word peasant? Do you feel uncomfortable? Do you feel anger? Do you feel superiority? Or do you feel pride? You know? Because I know the word peasant in English mainly, because in Spanish or in Mexico mainly, campesino has a different meaning. But in English, I've heard a lot of very good response when I say, when I talk about peasants, you know? And it's because the word has been used in a derogatory manner for years and years. It's been used as a synonym for idiot or ignorant or common, you know? The reality is that it has a deeper meaning. Peasants are communities with a deep connection to land, to earth. They are self-sufficient and they resist waged labor, which poses a threat to the economical lids, you know? They're not part of the system. In the Mexican Revolution, the word campesino became a rallying cry to remember oppressed societies that our connection with land is something to be proud of, not something to be ashamed of. So by reframing the word campesino, it's only a step in the path towards healing. Arca Tierra began 15 years ago by my brother. And I thought he was completely crazy, you know, becoming a farmer, recovering the chinampas. And on the surface, Arca Tierra may seem like a company that sells organic products to restaurants and offers tourism experiences to the chinampas. We also deliver organic boxes to households in Mexico City. But if you dig a bit deeper, Arca Tierra is a community. Arca Tierra is a community. Arca Tierra is a community. We also have a community. We also have a community. We also have a farming school. And we also have a program called Adopt a Chinampa, where we recover chinampas that are abandoned through regenerative agriculture. But on the deepest level, our objective is to honor and elevate the work of peasant farmers. They, as I said before, are the guardians of the earth. They take care of water, of soil, of air, while producing food that's healthy and nutritious, healthy and nutritious, while creating beauty, and while protecting our cultural heritage along the way. So, why is it, if they're so important, they're not fairly compensated? Some say there are technical barriers, you know, that peasant farming could not feed the world. But that's just bullshit for me, you know. It has been proven once and once again, for thousands of years, that they can coexist with nature while producing food and creating beauty. So, the barriers aren't technical. Are they cultural, economical, or symbolic? I think so. Economical, because the same people that want to erase peasant farmers from earth are the people that are feeding us with poison. They're poisoning the water, the soil, the earth, everything, you know. And also, it's a bit symbolic, because we still see peasants or campesinos are as simple as we look down upon them, as poor, as backwards, you know. And because nowadays, a role model is someone who's successful means someone who accumulates wealth no matter the cost, you know. So, what would happen if instead of having a role model like this, we would have someone like her, you know? I mean, it really is the exact opposite, you know. Peasant farmers show us, like the chinampas, or re-show us, another way of inhabiting the planet. They show us, like the chinampas, or re-show us, another way of inhabiting the planet. They show us that we can, we don't have to be just part of the planet. That we have to be an active participant in its balance and growth, you know. That in order to fulfill our job as human beings, we need to guide ecosystems through a process of regeneration, more complexity, and organization. If they were the role models, maybe we could stop, we could begin stepping back from the cliff we're running to, you know. How do we make people realize their immense importance? It's by getting close, by participating, by buying their produce, by getting to know them. I don't know how many chefs in this tent know the names of the farmers that grow their food, you know. Know their families. But you should, you know. It's a necessity. It's not just something cool, you know. It's something you should. And now I jump into a very different subject, but that it's all interconnected. Because with the learnings from the chinampas, and the chinamperos, and peasant farmers, which, as you've seen, are quite similar, we decided to take another step. And every time a chef or a group or someone asked me or my brother if we wanted to open a restaurant for the past 15 years, and it has been, like, a lot of offers, my brother always said, does the world really need another fucking restaurant? And I think he was right, you know. I think his answer is completely right. But then, everything changed. We met Doug in Mexico City. He was there for the wedding of Richard and Henrietta. And we took him to the chinampas, and he fell in love with the chinampas, and maybe a little bit with Lucio and me as well. But mainly the chinampas. That same night, we had some mezcales, and we decided we were going to open a restaurant together. And seven months after that, we opened Baldío. You know? It was like, how could... It was a perfect marriage. The Arcaterra system of more than 60 families working together with nature, interconnected, with the father of Silo, the first zero-waste restaurant, with all the know-how around zero-waste, you know. And as Doug says, waste is a failure of the imagination. And it is. Because in nature, waste doesn't exist. And if you're dealing with nature directly, like you're dealing with Arcaterra, then you can remove waste quite fast. And that's what happened, you know? The marriage of Silo and Baldío, and, sorry, Arcaterra, came up with Baldío. So, what's the main premise behind Baldío? It's to do as much as possible for nature, and as little as possible against it. You know, that phrase quote from Gilles Clément, it's maybe one of the best ones to describe what we do in Baldío, Arcaterra, and I suppose Silo as well. But you might think that in a zero-waste, closed-loop, ultra-seasonal system, there are many obstacles. But the reality is that these obstacles, these limitations, are opportunities, you know? Limitation breeds creativity. That's a reality. So, I just wanted to show off, mainly because this amazing drawing was made by Ari, the head of production and development in the bar in Baldío. But also because when you think that way, stuff like this comes out, you know? This is a cocktail that uses the whole corn, you know? We use the ash of the corn, we use the liquor of the corn, we do a spirit with the corn. We use it in everything, you know? And we also, for instance, we have this, Lau has them over there, but we give this souvenir, like a small message to our guests that's printed on this biomaterial, which is made out of scoby and eggshells. And it's so beautiful, you know? You can see it over there. They're just like giving them. And one very cool thing about this is that these are made by a friend called Elena. She was just walking around Baldío and she told us, ah, I heard you were a zero-waste restaurant. I want to help you with the biomaterial. So, what I mean is that doing these things, it also makes community, you know? It makes you know and get to know people that are super special. It's kind of like what math does, you know? So, yeah. Yeah, they're telling me that I'm... But I'll finish it. So, what are the principles to build something to last, you know? To build something like the chinampas, no matter where you are. This is a bit technical, of course, but it's natural succession, careful observation, zero waste. And the last one is maybe the most important one, necessity, you know? How do you build something to last? But besides the technical principles, which are the emotions you need in order to build something like that? It's wonder, it's curiosity, empathy, respect, ingenuity. How do we re-enchant the world, like Ernst Götsch says? And it's the same thing, you know? It's by participating, by showing up, by rediscovering its mystery, by letting go the need for control, by collaborating with all species. Because in the end, this isn't just about ecology. It's about rethinking how we relate to the world and to each other. That's what everything's about. Not fixing the world, not pretending to control it, but showing up with humility and creativity to respond, to participate, to regenerate, to celebrate, and hopefully to open a few more paths for how we might live, love, and take care of this planet together. Thank you.