From london@calypso-2.oit.unc.eduWed Sep 6 11:18:17 1995 Date: Wed, 6 Sep 1995 11:17:10 -0400 (EDT) From: "Lawrence F. London, Jr." To: permaculture-mg@ces.ncsu.edu Subject: Re: lists re Mexico (fwd) ---------- Forwarded message ---------- On Tue, 5 Sep 1995, Daniela Soleri wrote: > Could anyone suggest any lists that focus on contemporary Mexico, > especially concerned with traditional agriculture, or natural resources, > or plant population biology? > > Daniela Soleri > SOLERI@LIFESCI.LSCF.UCSB.EDU > Arid Lands Resource Sciences Program > University of Arizona Dear Daniela I was intrigued by the above message since I was about to ask something similar myself. I would be interested to know the exact nature of your request. Mine has to do with agricultural systems in Mexico, particularly as regards 'alternatives' ( and I recognize that for many people, these are not 'alternatives' as understood in the Western, industrialized context) to the Green Revolution maize package that were developed by the Rockefeller Foundation/Mexican Govt funded Officina de Estudios Especiales (which later evolved into CIMMYT). For your information, I have some references but would appreciate any others, particularly if they contain information concerning species diversity, intraspecific diversity, production etc. Here's what I have to hand at the moment: Edgar Anderson 'Plants Man and Life' (it was Anderson, at Missouri, to whom Carl Sauer sent seed varieties from Mexico after he became interested in crop domestication and cultivation in Mexico). Clawson and Hoy (1979) 'Nealtican, Mexico: A peasant community that rejected the 'Green Revolution''. Amer. J. Econ. Soc. 38, 371-87 Vogt, E.Z. (1970) The Zincantecos of Mexico. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston Brush et al (1988) Agricultural Development and Maize Divesrity in Mexico' Human Ecology 16 (3) 307-28 De Walt (1978) Appropriate Technollogy in Rural Mexico. Technology and Culture 19 (1) 32-52 Morales (1984) Chinampas and Integrated Farms: Learning from the Rural Traditional Experience in de Castri et al (eds) 'Ecology in Practice, Vol. 1 Ecosystem Management, pp. 188-95, Tycooly, Dublin. Francis and Sanders (1978) Economic Analysis of Bean and Maize Systems: Monoculture Versus Associated Cropping, Field Crops Research (1) 319-55. Bellon-Corales (1991) The ethnoecology of maize production under technological change: A case study from Mexico. Human Ecology 11, 47-68 Alcorn and Trujillo (1987) the Agroecology of Corn Production in Tlaxcala, Mexico. Human Ecology 15 (2) 189-220. In additon to the above, Ron Nigh wrote an excellent Ph.D. thesis some time in the 70s. I don't know if he is still living in San Cristobal, Chiapas where I met him two years ago. Luis Garcia-Barrios, who at that time was working at the Centro de Investigaciones Ecologicas de Sureste (I apologise for my poor written Spanish) in Chiapas, has written a few articles suggesting that traditional agricultural practices are less destructive than modern ones, focusing I think on Oaxaca. One of these is in the 1990 No 11 issue of World Development, another was in Spanish in Commercio Exterior - I forget the year. He was working at the time on a Ph.D. concerning intercropping. Alcorn has written a book of her work the title of which I forget. I think there are a few articles on Mexican agriculture in the volume edited by Gleissman (1990 I think) entitled simply 'Agroecology' and published by Springer-Verrr... One is on forest gardens, another on intercropping maize squash and beans, another on Chinampas ( I think). A book edited by Teresa Rojas entitled Agricultura en Tierras Mexicanas desde ... hace nuevos tiempos has chapters on crop domestication through to modern agricultural situation but some of the chapters are more political economy that technical. Also, the owrk of E. Hernandez X. is worth checking up on. I don't have his refernces to hand, but he was the acknowledged expert on races of maize before his death a short while ago. I've read most, but not all, of the above so hope there are not too many problems regarding their relevance. I'd welcome any additions. Perhaps Daniela or I could post a complete biblio at the end if that's considered useful. Thanks in advance for any help. Dominic Hogg, University of Cambridge. From soleri@lifesci.lscf.ucsb.eduThu Sep 7 23:06:44 1995 Date: Thu, 7 Sep 95 16:33:24 PDT From: Daniela Soleri Reply to: indknow@u.washington.edu To: indknow@u.washington.edu Subject: Re: lists re Mexico Dominic: Thanks for your note and copying your message to Thurston to me. I should have been more explicit in my initial message, as I was trying to find some email lists-----however, lists of relevant references are useful too! Your work sounds interesting, and appears to have some overlap with my interests. I will be starting field work in May regarding farmer management and genetic structure of maize folk varieties in an area near Mexico City. I'm looking at this from the perspective of understanding the genetic consequences of farmer management AND testing methods of assessing genetic structure and farmer practices with the goal of supporting/collaborating with farmers in local crop improvement for their own agricultural systems. From what I know there is not much good empirically-based work regarding diversity and traditional agriculture, although it is widely recognized to generally be more diverse than the industrial'model'. But for intraspecific diversity there ain't much relevant research to go on, Soleri & Smith 1995 Econ. Bot. 49:55-77 was a beginning effort in some senses. As for interspecific diversity there are an increasing number of studies that count farmer-named varieties (Brush's stuff, P. Richards, J.V. Dennis, M. Bellon, Soleri and Cleveland), which is a good start, however the relationship between named varieties and biologically distinct ones is not known. An article in BioScience Dec 1994, Cleveland et al., may be of interest for the crop variety angle of your work. I assume you have spoken with Paul Richards at University of London. Although he works in different areas, he has thought a lot about the inappropriateness of the green revolution for traditional agricultural systems. Hope some of this was useful, your ref list was useful to me---thanks! Let me know how your work progresses. Best wishes, Daniela Soleri Daniela Soleri SOLERI@LIFESCI.LSCF.UCSB.EDU Arid Lands Resource Sciences Program University of Arizona P.O. Box 12898 phone/FAX*: (805)562-6126 Santa Barbara, CA 93107 USA *call to notify before sending a FAX