Maya Milpa: Ancient Wisdom for Modern Farms

0:00 Hello everyone, thank you so much for tuning in. We are super excited to be doing the second episode of our summer webinar series with Dr. Annabelle Ford as our guest speaker. If this is the first time that you've been on a webinar with us, just know that your mics will be muted and your screens will be hidden throughout the presentation just so that we can devote full attention to our presentation today. If you do happen to come up with some questions, go ahead and use the Q&A feature right there at the bottom of your screen. You can submit those questions and we'll get around to those after our presentations today.

0:37 My name is Sophie. I am with the marketing team here at Green Cover. We have been doing a lot of work this year on the First Acre program, which was inspired by the Maya Milpa tradition. So this program gives free Milpa garden mix to any grower who is willing to grow, harvest, and donate the produce to their local community. So in this program we've been able to reference Milpa in teaching about the importance of diversity, and that's why we're so excited to have Dr. Annabelle Ford on today to talk a little bit more in depth about Milpa in Mesoamerica.

1:15 And so we got connected with Dr. Annabelle Ford in a pretty serendipitous way. We were thinking about how we could expand the project with local partners here in Nebraska, and so we reached out to our friends Graham and Laura from Regenerate Nebraska. And when they received the email from us, they were actually on their plane ride back from their trip to Belize where they were visiting Dr. Annabel Ford and learning about Maya Milpas. So that was quite the coincidence. And from there we were introduced to the Maya Regeneration Project, which is located in Omaha, Nebraska.

1:50 So at the time we didn't know it, but there are actually 8,000 people of Maya descent living in Nebraska, and approximately 2,000 of those people are living in Omaha. And today we've got Luis Marcos with us representing Comunidad Maya Pisham Ishim, and he's going to share with us more about the Maya Regeneration Project, which is a proposed project which is currently in its fundraising stage. It is an indigenous regenerative agriculture practices incubator. So he'll be sharing a little bit more about that, and you guys can ask him questions and learn more.

2:28 So I'm going to now introduce Dr. Annabelle Ford with her formal introduction. Dr. Annabelle Ford has decoded the ancient Maya landscape by combining archaeological research with traditional Maya knowledge. Ford studies patterns of settlement and environment, demystifying traditional views of the Ancient Maya by examining the common human aspects of the civilization that shed light on sustainable farming practices. Ford is recognized for her discovery of the Ancient Maya City Center of El Pilar on the contemporary border of Belize and Guatemala. She has transformed El Pilar into a Living Museum and laboratory. LPLR is a model of synergy between nature and culture where Ford is applying a focus on cultural ecology—or the study of the multifaceted relationships of humans and their environment. The co-evolution of human societies and the environment brings particular relevance to the study of Maya pre-history.

3:27 At LPLR, Ford is advancing programs that simulate Maya Forest Gardens as an alternative to conventional monocrop farming. Ford proposes ancient traditions yield contemporary solutions for the Maya Forest of Belize, Guatemala, and Mexico, where she is tuning in from today. Dr. Ford's work transcends the archaeological realm, entering the world of agroecology, environmental anthropology, and economic botany. Her innovative work offers an innovative approach to conservation that is imperative to the survival of the Maya living history. And with that, I will turn it over to you, Dr. Annabelle Ford, and we will enjoy your presentation.

4:08 Well, thank you. Can you tell me what's in your Milpa package for the one acre—you're requesting one acre with what seeds are you including? So we have over 40 different species, and well, so the basis is this year we have a lot of sweet corn in it. There are also different types of beans we have.

4:31 Different types of—I mean maybe Keith would be a better person to answer this because, okay, well maybe we—I just wanted to know so 40 different plants that are essentially spring from the American experience and not a European experience.

4:49 How do I—I just turn, I do I, if my screen is shared how do I make sure that my—I think that you can just go ahead and request to share your screen there's that. Okay, let me see that part. Okay, share screen. A disabled host precipitate disabled so. Okay now try. Yes, it looks like I can do it.

5:49 I want to introduce the Maya Forest as a garden and in a way talking in Nebraska which I hope to see in person shortly. When we do, when I participate in the Indigenous people's day that is sponsored—I don't know what is sponsored by Pishani Shim—is part of the Americas and like when I talk with local people in Mesoamerica, the Maya Forest, and I say well, they ask why I became interested in the Maya Forest or the Maya in general. And I said because I'm an American and I want to know what America is like. But they say no, you're American, we're not Americans. I may know you're Mesoamericans or you're Central Americans, but the Americas was not named by the United States. It was named by some guy who called it Amerigo Vespucci, and I don't even know how it really came, but we called this place which is also called the New World partly because it was formed very recently, not because somehow Columbus discovered it. But anyway, that we are in an American area whether it's Nebraska or the Maya Forest or Patagonia, and the way people interacted with this region and with this area has a lot in common I believe. And the plants you could look at what I'm talking about the Maya and replace it with I don't know the Omaha or the Chumash or whatever, because they were relating to their environment largely with the same palette we would say.

7:21 I came to this story and I'd like to not say discovered, like some people say, but I found El Pilar. Everyone knew it was there, but I found El Pilar largely because no one was looking away from rivers. They had the position that like in Europe rivers were very important. Well, in this area rivers are not important. They dry, they become dry and low in the dry season and they become very virulent and threatening in the wet season. These are areas—yes, of course they certain I don't want to say they didn't use it, but it wasn't a major source of communication as it might have been in later, you know, in the Mediterranean area.

8:04 And this seems to have a changing on its own so maybe I did something strange with my thing, but I wanted to talk about how I found the site almost 40 years ago and 25 years ago we started establishing the boundaries, and this was both in Belize and Guatemala. And then we created parallel management plans, and all along that same time we wanted to look at the issue of succession and have the kind of Kash, which is a model school garden, to try and build a link between people like Narciso, the elders, and the new school, you know, new people coming up in life, and exposed them to some of the very important things of their landscape.

8:54 One of the reasons why I want to do this is recognizing our common good, you know, it's our wealth. Untold people do not look at the landscape. You know, I just was reading something about soil and we're apparently expending our soil at a rate that—I don't know, some dire things say in 10 or 20 years we won't have any good soil anymore, and this is largely because people aren't looking at cover. Now I don't know exactly, as we would learn maybe more from Sophie and Keith and the people of green cover, but the idea of cover is under the shade, and shade of almost anything is better than no shade at all.

9:29 And to recognize that culture is part of nature, that we are natural, we are nature, part of nature and that we're always interacting with the natural processes and how we interact with them has positive or negative or even in some cases neutral impacts, and recognizing that there's different ways of knowing. I think this is really important, that scientific research can contribute, but also local people who know their landscape have a way of knowing. We need to combine and recognize and honor all these different aspects.

10:02 What you're seeing on the side here is the changes over the years that I've been working there. You can see what's happened is the expansion of pasture and plow, one of the more aggressive approaches to land use, and also something that was never used by any American because they did not have plows. They did not have metal and they didn't have draft animals. So the way they interacted with the landscape was looking for lands that they could manipulate and manage on a landscape level with the kinds of tools that they had. The tools that they had as they arrived were essentially those of observation, observation and using stone and fire. Both these tools allowed peoples of this landscape to adapt and recognize and utilize the landscape in a way that was not as impactful as the global world today, but definitely had impact.

11:03 They were adapting coming in in the Ice Age and living into like the archaic, which would be around 5000 years ago, was warm. So things, climate is always changing. We're not, it's not just now that it's changing. These early occupants of this landscape were very much adapting to climate change. Their initial experience was always one of flux from the Pleistocene Ice Age into the Holocene archaic, which is called the thermal maximum, and later the settled agriculturalists that were the ancient Maya. I don't know if it will stay here long enough, but you can look at this model of distribution and you can see the southeast, the Maya lowlands, and California are very high density areas and predicted areas for the early hunters and gatherers.

11:55 Now, I expect I'm speaking to farmers and I think farmers are most concerned about the attraction of land quality. What would they be first looking for are areas that would be fertile. When we talk about tropical areas we often think, oh, they're infertile, they're leached, they're terrible, and that's because the Amazon, a big tropical area, is characterized by very poor soils. To really show this, I had to go medium and high fertility, but really in the Maya Forest, over 50 percent of the area is really dominated by very good soils that are largely mollisols, which are well-drained and friable and very good for traditional hand cultivators like the Maya. So you can see that in an attraction that the Amazon would be less attractive than the Maya Forest when you're thinking of farming.

12:54 Now, farming today, you can see this very famous, this is a late 1990s, maybe 2000 picture on the right of Mexico and Guatemala that absolutely is recognizing this corner of the Maya forest. You can see that the landscape is very different in Mexico than it is in Guatemala. The population growth and use of the landscape is essentially pasturage in this area, pasture and plow but pasturage. Pasture, if it's maintained by the animals that have hoofs and eat, but also I've learned especially in the Peten that these people that have big branches will actually use mowing equipment. These are things that are very generalized and you can't select. One of my wonderful collaborators in Belize, Alfonso Sewell, says every plant is a recommendation. So just like you take a student or an intern or a person who's a volunteer as a new farmer, you want to train them. Everything they're looking at is a recommendation. If that recommendation comes in good or bad or you don't want.

14:13 It or you do want it, that's a really different way of looking at things. Now today it's critical—this Maya forest is a critical biodiversity hot spot. Reduced in extent, yet the Maya are co-creators of this landscape. The dominant species are all useful. It's based on this milpa cycle that we are talking about: a management of forest succession, not as it's perceived, a food source, but that is just one part of it. It's actually creating a landscape of utility, especially in the perennial component of forest succession.

14:55 So this picture that you see below, and it will stay the same on my right—I don't know whether you're looking at the screen the same way—but the left one I want to show how different a landscape might be. This left one, the one that shows the pasture or the plow, was put together by National Geographic in the 80s, saying that the city monuments and the people kept the forest at bay. You know, when you keep something at bay, it's something that's really nasty. And in fact, that's not at all how the Maya that I know look at this landscape. They look at it very much as dynamic.

15:36 This is the dynamic. It goes from open areas and closed areas and succeeding areas, all with utility for animals and plants, for construction. I mean, we have not just food, we have shelter. And these—the shelter, in fact, half of these dominant plants that are useful in the Maya forest are for different aspects of construction.

16:12 Of all these dominant plants, only one is wind pollinated. So when you look at reconstructions of the Maya forest and they're looking at pollen, pollen that would fly into the lakes that we would read, would really be something that was largely wind projected. Now a lot of these can move in the wind, but they won't be dominated by the wind. So looking at the landscape from pollen is only one lens. You have to look at it from a number of them.

16:48 Pollen as a window to environmental change: What you can see here is this is called Ramon. And remember, Ramon is the only wind pollinated plant of the twenty dominant plants. And you can see the change from ten thousand to eight thousand—this big change, the move from the cool arid times into the warm wet times. So Ramon, as a mega-thermal plant, is really a good target for understanding the expansion of the tropics. But as you'll see over here, it drops very low when we move into the classic Maya period. And it seems very odd to me that people would think of this as deforestation, because it's also the time of 1500 to 2000 years of the Maya civilization growing and expanding and dominating the landscape that we call the Maya forest.

17:48 So to me, it's not a legitimate way of looking at it. I always was doubtful, but they often said it became a savanna. But in fact, when you look at this, compare the grasses—which would be, I think, savanna—and you compare that to the forbs, which are all the annuals and perennials that grow very fast and have lots of wind pollinated regeneration. You can see that this is really the milpa cycle in the paleontological record. And that's really important to think of, rather than thinking of Ramon as this forest signature. Ramon is this—you don't live by Ramon alone. And once you introduced the milpa cycle as a plan of land use, you're going to be hydrating, putting up all of the wind pollination items that grow more in the sun.

18:44 So to me, this is not a story of deforestation, but a story of the development of the Maya civilization. And that's based on this: the dynamic cycles of the Maya forest with infield, outfield cycle of short-term annuals, which will be more wind and fast growing perennials, which allow the succession to happen, and then the closed canopy trees. For example, in this example of a twenty-year—

19:12 Now you might wonder if the data that we're collecting today has any connection with the past but here is a statement of a 1552 ordinance by this Governor Tomas Lopez which I really would not like to meet this man because he is actually saying we prohibited any Milpas in the in the towns a town should be in like Spanish towns they should be close to one another it should be clean thinking that having plants in your garden is not a clean without sewn lands and without gross which meant those had to be you don't legislate something that doesn't exist so we know that they had sewn lands and Groves in towns and if they found them they were going to burn them.

19:56 Here's an example of a contemporary Maya house site you can see the Milpa here and the forest forest garden in the back and the different kinds of different kinds of structures that they might have out building a kitchen and so forth which is the kind of complexity we see in the archaeological record now this is looking at contemporary policultural landscape you can see the infields that have are you know largely dominated by trees those trees you do find in the Milpa but they are small they're growing you know they're being nurtured and so you can see the same things that you have in your home Garden are found in the Milpa but the canopy and the Milpa is the Maze and with the nurturing of all the other plants as well.

20:43 So this is a quick version of what you might find this is a home garden and you can see they're drawing their chilies in the Sun but you can see the house and the forest gardens around the house fire this man is called a yum eek which is a master of wind I always call it a fire tender but of course to know how to tend to Fire and you can hear the stories of what's happening in California now you have to manage the wind and you can see look at this look at the smoke it's not whipping away it's going straight up and that's a really good indication that they know and understand how to manage fire in a Milpa.

21:23 Here's a setting afterwards might look like a moonscape but all look at the trees that are there and all these small low low trees will probably re-sprout hastening the Regeneration of this area.

21:38 They plant right in stone you can see why in fact the map of Tikal shows the area around Tikal one of the biggest Maya centers to be not cultivable and the reason why they're talking they're equating cultivable with plowable and something that's plowable will not be cultivable but you can see but not as is different than cultivable this is this landscape here is Rocky but it's got very good friable soil and will look like this very soon and you can see lots of different things happening here we have the squash and we have the Maize and probably about 30 other crops.

22:18 This is an interesting picture too which I don't know it wants to go away this is looks like stocks that may be dried and dead but all of them are turned you can see that the maze is on the stock they're being cut broken and they're left there to harvest at a later time and these are beans growing up and I showed this picture to an economic botanist he said there's something else very important going on there too but I need to write that down so I can tell you more about it later.

22:46 Then of course it moves from The Maze field to fast growing perennials and today that kind of a fast-growing perennial will be in the context of a forest and the perennials in this case are a global plant and Maize instead of just something that would have been native to the myoforce this is a plantain and banana and you can even see the plantains and bananas still trying to grow in this perennial this is a four this is a more of an orchard and I see you know allspice and and Maize and citrus and other things that would ultimately return back to a managed Forest like choco who who is in his place where he says he's going to retire but sadly he died last year.

23:33 This is my animation of a milfa cycle at El Pilar using my lidar I have lidar and

23:39 The mapped area is showing how the cycle might work and the yellow would be the four-year maize field and then the lighter green would be the first eight year succession and a slightly darker green would be the final mature canopy. In an area that of course if it's too steep they would not be using as they would just be growing the trees so they become a managed landscape in toto.

24:14 How are we honoring this Maya heritage? It's a big question. What was seen here in the 1830s looks very different than what you would see today in at Chichen Itza for example and I believe removing the forest and making up stories because of course here you can see this is what the person saw in 1830 certainly in 1900 it was even more collapsed. How could it look like this? This is gravity not just a good idea, it's the law. So this is completely made up and maybe it's made up with good ideas or maybe it's just made up. And that's why I even wonder about that serpent because how can you see that? That might have come from this view.

24:58 Here is Tikal here's Tikal when I saw it in 1972 and here's what you could see in 2000 by exposing and taking the monuments away from their forest which of course we're talking about neglect in the past but why should we neglect now? Why wouldn't we leave the things that preserved it? It was the cool temperatures the lack of salt coming out and not attracting these biofilms that basically drop acid and turn these beautiful mosaics and stuccos to dust.

25:35 My ideas that we would like to create monuments out of ruins rather than making ruins out of monuments. So I call them monuments and I see this as a Living Museum designed to manage the resources of ancient Maya heritage Under The Canopy with community participation and in this case envisioning a peace park that would be a very different way of framing the monuments rather than taking away the forest and that's the way we are looking at this in terms of archeology Under The Canopy. The canopy is the very canopy that the Maya nurtured over there millennia of adapting to this and it would actually create an open museum where people could actually question and understand and appreciate the forest as well as the ancient monuments.

26:29 How can we learn from these kinds of things? Of course the temperature and precipitation is changing and we know that we're getting great times of many much water and much rain and less rain and also that the temperature is increasing. What I think forest gardens offer and this is wherever you are whether you're in Nebraska or California or in the Maya forest or right here in San Cristobal which I'm at 2,300 meters it builds fertility reduces erosion lowers temperature conserves water and increases biodiversity. So to care for people on our planet and that's what we should all be thinking about in how we use our landscape because it's not just for us we have people in the future coming along.

27:16 In the area where I work I say they're Heroes of the Maya Forest who are ready to help but they're all soon dying and with every departure we're getting we're losing practice. It's not just like an encyclopedia you can't really understand how to you can't look up in it. It's not like a recipe book so much as a practice. You have to be there and learn and understand so it's really important to be with these people and to create avenues for succession of these wonderful techniques. Beatrice Wade is a medicinal herbal midwife. Leonardo Obando had cows and bees so he had a very dynamic way. Alcario Kano had his land was really steep and the agricultural department wanted to take it back. I had to write a letter saying have you been there? It may not look like it but this is a beautiful forest gardener. And edible was really into education but his kids were not so we wanted to do the thing that would try to help the kids to create a model.

28:31 School garden where no child was left indoors. This is a project that has ebbs and flows and of course had a hard time over the time of COVID, but we envisioned re-igniting the interest here. And I've used Forest Gardeners to help create an example of an urban forest garden. Here is the little house that I rent as my brass base, and two years later how it looked. Two years later it was just a completely different situation. And here it is sort of more or less today, and you can see on either side there are no trees, but we have dozens of trees and many different ways of eating and enjoying and even the shade, keeping the dust lower on an all-weather road.

29:27 I really want to promote the forces of the garden and using El Pilar as an example to draw an educational experience not just for tourists but also for local visitors. And I think it really has done that. So this is what it looks like more or less today, and my hope is that it may be someone in the future, I don't know if I will be the one, but we'll actually be able to envision what I have thought of as archaeology under the canopy.

29:58 I want to give you a chance to look. I have a new website called mayaforce. Well, it's not new, it's just renewed. A renewed website, mayaforcegardeners.org, which is really trying to bring out this story of the Maya for us as a garden. And I encourage you to look at that as well as my non-profit, exploring solutions past ESP maya.org, and my university because I am a scholar who is working at a university, University of California Santa Barbara, and I have my more scholastic oriented component there. And I want to say that I'm going to be in Omaha, Nebraska. I don't know where you guys are, but I will be there for this indigenous people summit and would invite all of you to join and find out what are the stories that are coming out of this event.

31:01 Thank you.

31:07 Thank you Dr. Ford, a very interesting presentation. I wrote down several things that I might want to discuss with you later, just some things that I think you observed in the past that we can apply to the present and the future that are just spot on. But before we get into that, and by the way, for all of our people who are watching, if you have questions, if you have some things that you would like Dr. Ford to further discuss, go ahead and put those into the chat box or Q&A box. I will be getting to those here in just a moment. But before we get to that, I want to invite Luis to come back on screen and talk a little bit about what the Mayan community within Omaha and within the greater Nebraska area are doing. His organization is going to be co-hosting the event that Dr. Ford just mentioned and talked about. So Luis, go ahead and share with us some of the things that you are doing there in Omaha and how it relates to some of the research that Dr. Ford has done and is continuing to do as well.

32:20 Well, I'm thankful for this opportunity to join this conversation and with Dr. Ford. Thank you Keith, thank you Sophie for inviting us here. And I will share a little bit about the Maya regeneration project. First, the spirit of corn. We're based here in this sacred land of the Omaha nation. And the Maya regeneration project consists of a four-step process that will take us to regenerative agriculture at scale. Step number one is for us to plant our sacred seeds here at this Maya Community Center that we're renting at the moment, and so basically to plant the seeds of corn, beans, squash, and our relatives from the north here belonging to Cherokee Omaha Nation gave us the fourth seed which is sunflower. We're planting our.

39:31 I think the green cover organization and also everyone involved like Sophie and also Keith and Dr Ford for sharing time and space and everyone. So sending you just all good energies from here and thank you for being such a valuable partner in our milka garden project.

39:56 I'll just share real briefly about that. You know, as a company green cover for the past several years we've promoted this concept of the milka garden—not just the fill before us because this is a very short duration—but what we've tried to do is implement many of the principles that Dr Ford was talking about that the Mayans would have been practicing for many generations. But really, it's the principle that there's great power and strength in great diversity. So what we're doing is we're mixing together many annual plants: different types of squash and melons and pumpkins and leafy vegetables and brassicas like turnips and radishes and things like that, cucumbers. And really what we're trying to do is get that seed out to people. We donate the seed to them for free if they're willing to plant it and then harvest some of that produce and donate it to their community food banks, their homeless shelters, or nursing homes.

41:04 So really what we're trying to do is twofold: rebuild the soils by doing all of the diversity and practicing the principles of soil health, but also rebuilding communities by engaging 4-H clubs and FFA chapters and church youth groups to get all that involved. So the nature conservancy and Syngenta have partnered with us this year to help promote that program, and we've been able to get more seed out than in the past. And we'll continue to do this. We continue to learn every year what different combinations may work better.

41:39 But Luis, I know we sent some to you guys to put in your gardens there in Omaha. Is it doing halfway decent or have you had the same tough weather that a lot of other people have had? What's your milka garden looking like?

41:57 Yeah, it's a beautiful garden. I think we were trying a quarter of an acre here with Graham at his farm, but also trying some here in our community center. But it's looking good. I think the youth is being introduced to the concept. I think we're trying to adapt to what's how things are being done here in Nebraska, learning and just allowing things to just do little things here and there until we get access to land where we can practice it according to our systems.

42:43 Yeah, very good. So we've got a few comments coming in from the people listening here that they're having good success with the milpa garden technique. And again, it's really just a testimony to the power of diversity.

42:56 And Dr Ford, if you're still on and can hear, I want to address something that you said early on—that as the Mayan people would have been starting this, they were very limited in the tools that they had, but one of the most important tools that they had was the tool of observation. And I really picked up on that because what we see in working with regenerative farmers all across the country is the most successful regenerative farmers typically are the best observers because they look to see what's happening and what's going on. And observation is only really good if you're able to make decisions about it. Essentially, you have to make management decisions, but you can't make those decisions unless you're observing that. So I really thought that was a great statement, and I think it's largely lacking in a lot of agriculture today, but the most successful ones that I'm seeing are becoming better and better observers.

44:00 And just wondered if you had any comments or you've seen other segments of agriculture starting to be better observed?

44:09 Well, you have to be more of a small folder. I mean, if you use mowers, if you use big machines, you're not going to be.

44:15 Observing, I mean that's at least at the ground level, but also I think that observation can be at bigger levels. Alfonso tells me that if you work with Agriculture and he had these sort of models that he gives you, so if you've got your 50 acres that you're going to lease and ultimately own, he says don't start doing things right away. Walk around, see where the water accumulates, see where it drains. Get to know it at that level of observation so you don't try to put something that needs water in a dry place or something that wants to be dry in a wet place.

44:53 I think those are at higher order of observation, and then another kind, being the small level observation, I have many examples. I have my little house with my forest garden, and I didn't have one plant that really grows great and provides wonderful shade, but it's a Southeast Asian tree called almond and it has a fruit that produces something that looks a bit like an almost really large, and it's edible, but it's not something I was going for, you know, a native kind of garden. Animals just move it all over and it's popping up everywhere. One time it was April, which is really dry where I work, and I was talking to Narcisse, so I said I think we should take that out. He says yeah, yeah, that's a good idea. The next couple weeks I say it's still there. Didn't you want to take it out? Didn't you think we should take it out? He says Annabelle, it's the dry season. We'll do it when it starts raining. In other words, he saw it as keeping shade in that little area. It wasn't big, but he was observing and he kept it there.

46:01 Like I said, Alfonso always says you know, look at every plant that jumps up as a recommendation, and the only way you can do that is if you're observing. I notice when I'm walking around in the forest with my forest gardeners, if they don't recognize a seed or they see a plant they don't know, they immediately are noting it. If it's a seed, they'll take it back and plant it just to see what it is. I think this is a vine, and then they'll plant it and see if it's a vine. So again, that's you're talking about how experimental you're observing, you're going to be more experimental.

46:38 Yeah, and that's really important. Dale, one of my colleagues and I were just out walking in all of our test plots this morning trying to be observers at that initial level, and really one of the things that we observed is how much better things did growing under the canopy, especially the cool season plants, you know, the kales and the collards and the turnips and radishes. Where they're exposed to the sunlight, they're almost completely burnt up, or they're growing under the canopy of some sunflowers and some sorghums and other taller plants, they look great. They're growing in the shade of something that is an annual as well, so think of that as a canopy, I mean it's sort of a shortened canopy, but yeah it's really important.

47:21 And so you know, I think that sometimes we think that we're so smart, but really we're just kind of rediscovering some of these things that people would have known for generations and generations of how well those things grow in combinations, and the overall concept of weed is a real conundrum. In fact, there's no concept of that in the Mayan language that I'm familiar with, so you know you have good plants and bad plants, or plants you want and plants you don't, you know. So the Almond is a perfectly decent plant, but I don't want it, you know, in that space. I don't want something that big, and you really can transplant things too if you want, you know.

48:10 And I also made a note of one of the things that you said, that there's currently 24,000 plant species in the Maya forest gardens, but that's less than 30—less than, or yeah, I'm sorry the—

48:25 Forest but that's less than 30 percent of what it would have been initially. Is that correct? No, the area—the area—the area, not the amount. We don't know what it would—I mean, in fact, you might imagine because humans are pernicious. The Maya aren't any better than you or I are. We're wanting to be ourselves fed and sheltered and we want to be happy and we want, you know, our kids to be happy or whatever, so we're going to always be making decisions of our preference. But it's just how you look at that preference. Are you looking at it in terms of, you know, how long—like, if you're looking at longevity of soil production or looking at, you know, how you need? I mean, think of this, you know, you need to have posts for making a house. No Maya archaeologist is looking—I mean, they look at that when I show that picture of what the National Geographic was thinking. They weren't thinking of shelter.

49:28 I have and I've been—that's been my latest little project to try and see where you would get the plants that would be appropriate. And I don't know what the language of Luis would—he, you have to have a heartwood, and that's called chulul, and it gives something really strength. And if you put, like, a mahogany—we think mahogany is such a great construction—if you put that in the ground, it'll just destroy it. It will just turn to dust. It's not going to be one that you want to use for beam or posts, but you could use them for beams. So you have to have a plant that will have that heartwood, and that means not everything is that.

50:12 So I had a list of about 40 plants that were for construction, and I went over them with my colleagues there, and I've also found a couple of books that start talking about this, and no one sort of melded that in. We always talk about, like, people—for people, we have to have food and shelter. We talk about homeless—well, you have to have shelter. So how are the Maya managing shelter? Because that is as important as food.

50:39 One small house, or a house 20 by 10, would use 10,000 batching leaves, and these people were telling me when they were growing up they could find that within—I forced them. I said they would just be out there. Well, would you walk a half hour? Would you walk an hour? No, we'd never walk any more than a half hour for our resources. So the resources were managed in that landscape.

51:07 I have one kind of final closing question for you before we have to wrap things up. But before I do that, I know there's been a few questions about whether this webinar will be available on recording. Yes, it will be. We'll have it on our YouTube channel here as soon as we can get the post-production work done on it. Somebody's also asking, Dr. Ford, if your slides will be available. Are you willing to share those if people—that's fine. I mean, you've recorded it, so I don't have that. As long as they could probably—they don't say that's theirs, you know? Sure, yeah.

51:44 So we'll do that, and then if anybody's interested in the Milpa program that we talked about, just reach out to Sophie or myself. We can give you more information on that as well. So we'll be making all that available. But, Dr. Ford, maybe just in closing, just talk a little bit—because you're right, there are a number of farmers watching this. What would be the advice if you would give, you know, from the forest garden information that you have, knowing the forest food system, how can that relate to agriculture today? What additional things can we learn and apply to make ourselves better producers today?

52:26 Well, I think those principles that I mentioned that I gathered—you know, if we need to think of more diversity. People don't invest in stocks. They don't just buy Sears. Look what happened to them. No, they diversify. It's the same thing we should be doing with our food. And, of course, shade—you know, considering how soil is responding. I mean, if soil—

52:48 The soil beneath our feet—Joe Handlesman's new book on the past, present, and future of soil. I mean, everything depends on that. So if we're not thinking of that as part of regeneration and having trees in our environment, using trees because they are perennials and will give you lots of erosion control—I mean, how do we check erosion? We don't. And looking at Weiss's companion, I mean we're talking about cover, you're talking about cover and how different plants respond. The weeds are not weeds—they can be very important. I love the fact that amaranth is considered a super weed. In fact, that amaranth that's called a super weed is actually an edible.

53:34 I need to really understand—I've read a few things about it. I guess it's not for cows, so that's a problem. So the Roundup Ready soybean is for the cows, but if somehow the amaranth could be... Kinoamps were the first domesticates in the New World. Quinoa and amaranth, and amaranth was almost as important in Mesoamerica at the time of contact. It was just legislated against because it was used in certain rituals that the Spanish did not like. But for every one of maize, it was two-thirds of a cargo—was worth two-thirds of a cargo of green amaranth. So I'm just thinking, why can't we? I mean, if it has adapted to close down abilities to take in the toxins, this should be something we should celebrate and look at weeds as something really important. There's a very important edible with lots of protein. I of course like Chaya better, but I mean this is something that is growing, naturally growing. Can't we engage with nature and start using nature?

54:42 And I guess one of the things that I really do worry about is how we advantage the small holder. And I was listening to one of these programs about the new farm bill and how it doesn't—you don't have there aren't any insurances for small holders and for people who. And smallholders are small—like, this is way bigger than anything I know. We should be ensuring horticultural products and encouraging local wars, you know, people, and you, and encouraging how using less footprint for distribution. And I think all of these things are what smallholders tell us, and in fact smallholders around the world are producing more food for more people than any other, even though it looks different in Iowa, yeah I guess, and Nebraska.

55:37 But I think those five principles—you know, biodiversity, looking at erosion, building up soil, which are really all related, and conserving water. I don't know about how you're thinking about water. Monterrey apparently 60 percent of their population in Monterey and Northern Mexico are without water now. So you know, we've got to be concerned about all these things, and shade is one of the best things for conserving water.

56:04 Yeah, all those principles all work together. So fascinating talk, fascinating discussion. Thank you so much. We will make sure that we get the information for the program that you're going to be doing with Louise and Omaha coming up. We'll make sure we get that posted out on our social media channels, and if anybody has questions about that, if you can't find it on the internet again, let us know. We can get you connected with that, and it looks like a fascinating meeting. So thank you everybody for joining us. Thank you, Dr. Ford. Thank you, Luis. And we will be having another webinar next week. Sophie, do you want to tell us a little bit about what's coming up next week?

56:47 Yes, so next week we're having Steve Groff on, and he's going to talk about the bio nutrients meter that he is currently trialing with the Bio Nutrient Foods Association. And that meter can potentially measure the nutrient density of food—so primarily fruits and vegetables right now. And we're going to be learning about that and hearing from him. So same time next week, 12 o'clock Central Standard Time, Tuesday.

57:21 Thank you everybody. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Ford. CNN.