Food security
Mexico’s Floating Gardens Are an Ancient Wonder of Sustainable Farming
Standing amid rows of juicy, lime green lettuce and chunky florets of broccoli, Jose Paiz appears as if he could be the owner of a modern, high-tech farm. But the crops thriving here, in the suburbs of Mexico City, are part of a 1,000-year-old tradition.
“My ancestors were doing this before even the [Spanish] Conquistadors arrived in Mexico [in 1519],” says Paiz, while crouching down to pick up a handful of powdery soil from the chinampa, or “floating garden,” on which we are both standing.
These highly productive man-made island-farms, which can be found floating on lakes across the south of Mexico’s capital, date back to the time of the Aztecs or perhaps even earlier — and now proponents say that these ancient engineering wonders could provide an important, sustainable food source as the city faces historic drought.
As a chinampero, Jose Paiz is carrying on a tradition that goes back centuries. Credit: Peter Yeung
“My grandparents taught me the methods,” adds Paiz, 32, who is the fifth generation of his family to be a chinampero working in San Gregorio Atlapulco, a traditional working-class neighborhood about 10 miles south of the center of Mexico City.
Experts say that these chinampas, which have been recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage site, are considered one of the most productive agricultural systems in the world. The artificial islands are built by gathering large amounts of soil from the bottom of the lake and placing it on top of reeds, grasses and rushes in a mass that rises above the water. Farmers then plant a fence of ahuejotes, Mexican willow trees, around the plot to naturally protect against erosion. This system means that the chinampa’s soil is constantly enriched by nutrient-filled sediment flowing in from the surrounding ditches and canals, yielding multiple harvests every year.
Ahuejotes, Mexican willow trees, are planted around the plots to protect against erosion. Credit: Peter Yeung
“In terms of agriculture, they are one of the best examples of how humans can work with nature,” says Lucio Usobiaga, founder of Arca Tierra, an organization providing local farmers in the area with technical and entrepreneurial support.
One of the first traces of the chinampas dates back to the 14th century, when the Aztecs arrived at the region of what is now modern-day Mexico City. There, they founded the settlement of Tenochtitlán — which would become one of the most powerful cities in all Mesoamerica — in the Valley of Mexico.
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But as the Aztecs soon discovered, the valley’s boggy, lake-filled landscape was difficult to cultivate or build on. So they devised an ingenious plan to adapt to the surroundings: the chinampas.
A 2013 paper by North Carolina State University professor Matthew Teti found that in the 16th century, chinampa farms could produce 13 times as much crop as dry-land farming in the same area — a system that provided food for hundreds of thousands of people. Chinampas, the study said, are “one of the most intensive and productive agricultural systems ever devised.”
Credit: Peter Yeung
Greens and other vegetables flourish on the chinampas, which are considered one of the most productive agricultural systems in the world.
“Aztec planners created these vital waterways as integral to the existence of its cultural, physical, and spiritual, urban identity, rather than draining the water and excluding it from the urban experience,” it continued.
In the case of Jose Paiz, the age-old system is still reaping rewards today. He says that his 7,000 square meters of chinampa, for example, can produce as much as 100 kilograms of broccoli per day — which is sold alongside the yields of fresh herbs, spinach, chard, radishes, corn and kale at local markets in the south of Mexico City.
“I’m proud to be continuing the tradition of my ancestors,” he says.
Produce grown on the chinampas is sold at bustling markets in the south of Mexico City. Credit: Peter Yeung
Meanwhile, according to Arca Tierra, their network of seven producers in the region cultivates over 40,000 square meters of land, employing a total of 27 workers in the field and producing 3,650 kilograms per month. At some farms, as many as 95 varieties of vegetables and herbs are cultivated, underlining the fertility of the method. The production brings in over $4,000 per month in crop sales.
“At the beginning, it was mainly a commercial endeavor to source organic produce close to the city,” says Usobiaga, who supplies restaurants in Mexico City and began working with chinamperos in 2009. “But I learned they are very important in many regards and have historical and cultural importance.”
The design of the chinampas is particularly efficient in its use of water, which it can absorb and retain from the surrounding canals for long periods as well as allowing crops to draw from the groundwater directly, reducing the need for active irrigation.
Credit: Peter Yeung
When it comes to farming, according to Lucio Usobiaga, founder of Arca Tierra, the chinampas “are one of the best examples of how humans can work with nature.”
This could prove hugely valuable for Mexico City and its 22 million residents, since water supplies have fallen to historic lows due to abnormally low rainfall partly attributable to climate change. And lessons learned from the chinampas could potentially help cities around the planet: the UN World Water Development 2024 Report found the number of people lacking access to drinking water in cities will likely reach two billion by 2050.
“The technical aspects of agriculture are innate to every place,” says Usobiaga. “But the way of thinking that created the chinampas, that sensibility, has to be appreciated and valued: To work with the flow of nature, the flow of the seasons. That is what we have to use to get us out of the problem we are in.”
The endangered axolotl is only found in the waterways of southern Mexico City. Credit: Peter Yeung
The unique wetlands ecosystem is also home to two percent of the world’s and 11 percent of Mexico’s biodiversity, including the critically endangered axolotl, or Ambystoma mexicanum, an incredible salamander-like amphibian that is able to regenerate every part of its body — even parts of its vital organs such the heart and brain.
Meanwhile, the chinampas also provide a host of other benefits: they filter water, cool the city, sequester carbon, offer green space for locals, and are now a popular destination for tourists who take boats along the picturesque waterways.
The value of the chinampas was underlined during the Covid-19 pandemic, when, as the city’s major markets ground to a halt, the chinampas were able to provide healthy, locally-grown food. In some cases, sales more than doubled.
“People began to search for healthier food,” says David Monachon, a social sciences researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico who has researched the chinampas as a sustainable food source. “There was this focus on local economy and community. Many people didn’t make this connection before.”
Yet despite their immense value, the chinampas are under threat: rising urbanization means the chinampa landscape is being built on; pollution is dirtying the waters that feed them; younger generations are losing interest in agriculture; and agro-industry is under-cutting the small-scale producers in a price war.
Credit: Peter Yeung
For chinamperos like Jose Paiz, the age-old agricultural system is still reaping rewards today.
“There are a lot of challenges and problems,” says Monachon, who is supporting a local cooperative of chinamperos to sell their goods via the Mercado Universitario Alternativo, or Alternative University Market. “But chinampas could feed the city.”
Now, only 20 percent of the 2,200 hectares of chinampas are in use, and only about 2.5 percent are being actively cultivated for farming food — the rest is being used for growing flowers and tourism. But Arca Tierra is helping to restore the chinampas — five hectares to date — and is training 15 young students in the required skills to cultivate them — the second, six-month cohort — while also carrying out research on the most effective techniques and productive crops to use on them.
Arca Tierra is currently helping to restore the chinampas and training young students in the required skills to cultivate them. Credit: Antoli Studio / Arca Tierra
“We have demonstrated that it can be done on a small scale,” says Usobiaga, who believes chinampas have the potential to produce enough of crops like lettuces, herbs and broccoli for all of Mexico City. “But the chinampas need support and investment from the government to scale up production.”
At Xochimilco market, the largest in the area, there is clear evidence of appetite for a resilient, local food system and signs that this ancient Aztec tradition can still bear fruit. The market bustles with traders and customers, spilling from the covered area out onto the streets.
Rosa Garcia sells the produce that she grows on her family’s one-hectare chinampa at Xochimilco market. Credit: Peter Yeung
Rosa Garcia, 47, is rushing around delivering lettuce, spinach, cilantro and broccoli to her 14 clients of the day. The produce, grown at her one-hectare chinampa at San Gregorio Atlapulco, is in high demand. Garcia says that each day her family-run farm can earn as much as 1,000 to 1,500 Mexican pesos ($60 to $90).
“I’ve been doing this since I was a girl,” says Garcia, ticking off the orders as they are dispatched. “It’s a system that works. Why do anything different?”
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How Farmers Are Preparing for a Saltier Future
When Arjan Berkhuysen and his fellow volunteers on the Dutch island of Terschelling looked for a spot to start a garden, they sought the least fertile location they could find. The plot they landed on is just over a dike from the Wadden Sea along the Netherlands’ northern coast. The water in the irrigation ditches is often brackish. For most growers, salinity is an affliction; salt in soil or water can diminish plant health and reduce crop yield. But for this group of gardeners, the spot was ideal.
De Zilte Smaak — “The Salty Taste” — specializes in edible plants that grow in saline conditions, like samphire, tiny spears that resemble asparagus, and tender-leafed sea aster. The salt-loving delicacies grown on this plot end up on plates in restaurants across this island, a popular summer destination. The project is one of a number of initiatives in the Netherlands exploring the possibilities of farming in salty conditions, ranging from edible plants in small-scale gardens like this, to identification of salt-tolerant varietals of conventional crops like potatoes and beets.
Most of the vegetables De Zilte Smaak grows are distributed to local restaurants. Courtesy of Stichting De Zilte Smaak
In the Netherlands and worldwide, more and more farmers are facing challenges with food production as climate change makes soils and water saltier. Globally, an estimated 20 percent of cultivated land is affected by salinity. In the Netherlands, where a quarter of land is below sea level, some regions are seeing impacts already, and salinity is expected to become a more prominent hurdle for agriculture in the decades ahead. But recent developments are proving it’s possible to adapt farming techniques and crops to saline conditions.
“As humans, we tend to always adapt the environment to us,” says Berkhuysen, a member of De Zilte Smaak’s board. “Here, [we] try to adapt ourselves to the environment.”
For cooking, salt can make food tastier. But for farming, it’s generally bad news. When salt becomes concentrated in soil or water, it can damage plants, reduce the yield of crops, and even make farmland useless.
Oesterblad, or oyster leaf, is among the salt-tolerant plants De Zilte Smaak grows. Courtesy of Stichting De Zilte Smaak
“It can be a big problem because for a lot of cash crops salinity is not good,” says Kate Negacz, an assistant professor with Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam’s Institute for Environmental Studies. She heads the Saline Agriculture for Adaptation (SALAD) project, which is researching saline agriculture in Europe and North Africa. “They will perform worse, which can then lead to food security challenges.”
Salinization is not a new problem. Evidence suggests salinity hindered ancient societies from Mesopotamia to Peru. But phenomena associated with climate change and other human activities are driving salinity in a number of ways. Warmer temperatures, for instance, lead to higher rates of evapotranspiration; as water leaves the soil through evaporation and is taken up by plants, salt is left behind. During periods of drought, when there’s little rain, salty seawater can seep inland via groundwater and the mouths of rivers. Even in areas far from the coast, salt can concentrate as groundwater depletes. Rising sea levels are also leading to more flooding involving saline water, leaving impacts on the land.
In a rice-growing region in Vietnam, where salinity once reached 30 to 50 kilometers from the coast, it now is seeping in more than 100 kilometers. Inland areas are affected too: in Australia, severe salinity impacts more than one million hectares of formerly productive farmland. Mid-Atlantic farmers in the United States are struggling with salt patches. Coastal erosion and sea-level rise in Egypt are deteriorating the quality of cultivated land.
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Prescription Meal Kits Are a New Tool for Managing Diabetes
This story was originally published by Civil Eats.
Recently, at age 72, Shane Bailey changed her grocery store routine. Her first stop is now the produce section to pick up kale, her new favorite food. She prepares it with collard greens, mixes it into stir-fries, and boils it in vegetable broth. Another new love is white sweet potatoes mashed with a dab of butter. She also has a new go-to sandwich: avocado, low-fat mayonnaise, white onions, and alfalfa sprouts between toasted rye bread. “Oh my God, it’s to die for,” she said. She then raves about donut peaches. “Google it!” she insisted. “It looks like a donut, but it’s a peach.”
Bailey was introduced to these new kitchen staples through a prescription meal kit delivery program, known as Healthy Food Rx. A collaboration between local community organizations, the Public Health Institute (PHI), and a large philanthropic fund, the 12-month program delivered meal kits twice monthly for adults with diabetes in Stockton, California. Although the city is located at the top San Joaquin Valley, a major agricultural region, fresh produce is sparse and people in many Stockton neighborhoods struggle with food insecurity.
Over half of the town’s 320,000 residents are diabetic or prediabetic, according to PHI. The Healthy Food Rx program aims to help change that, recognizing the large body of research linking food insecurity and diabetes. So far, the approach — delivering meal kits with enough food for two meals and pantry staples, paired with nutrition fact sheets and cooking lessons — appears promising in managing diabetes.
Alex Marapao leads a cooking class that is streamed to participants in the Healthy Food Rx program. Credit: Abbott Fund
Along with addressing the sharp rates of diabetes in Stockton, a larger goal of the program is to build the case for a program like this to be treated as medicine. It’s part of a nationwide food as medicine movement to prescribe nutritious foods, recognizing the medical capacity of food to help manage or prevent chronic diseases.
So far, the majority of programs under this banner prescribe fruits and vegetables or medically tailored meals that have been pre-prepared and designed to support a particular condition. While home-delivered meal kits have yet to gain widespread traction as a medical intervention, advocates hope that it could offer a more educational approach — while eliminating transportation issues — to supporting people with chronic diseases, which is nearly half of the US population.
Engineering Dietary Shifts
After just six months, Bailey attributes to Healthy Food Rx a dramatic shift in her diet despite a lifetime of ingrained habits. She especially loved the optional cooking and nutrition classes that were offered alongside the meal kits. “It has opened up a whole new area in my shopping list under fresh vegetables,” Bailey said. “It has taught me how to cook things, like dandelion greens and kale, that I never knew existed. It has been very educational.”
The shift has also helped her better manage her Type 2 diabetes. She’s observed a reduction in her A1C levels, a measurement of blood sugar levels used to diagnose diabetes, which fell from 7.2 to 6. It’s a significant drop: An A1C over seven is considered uncontrolled diabetes, increasing the risk of other health complications. Now, her blood sugar levels are in a manageable range. She’s also lowered her dosage of the diabetes medicine Trulicity.
Of course, Bailey’s outcomes may be also attributed to her mindset, one particularly receptive to change. She calls herself a “lifelong learner,” and because she’s retired on a fixed income, she seeks out every free educational opportunity she can find.
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This is a broader problem with evaluating lifestyle change programs: They tend to draw people motivated to change. That said, other participants in the program also saw their A1C levels fall into a healthier range.
In fact, an internal study of 450 program participants found a clinically significant decrease in A1C levels — an average 0.8 percent decline — within 12 months for participants with uncontrolled diabetes. The study participants also reported that the dietary shifts helped them exercise and take health education classes more often.
While the study’s limitations make it comparable to an internal evaluation — there’s no control group or peer review — it points to initial promise of meal kits that utilize fresh fruits and vegetables in managing diabetes. (Bailey, who is still in the program, wasn’t in this study.)
A meal kit distributed through the Healthy Food Rx program includes fruit, vegetables, and pantry staples such as nuts and canned tuna. Credit: Abbott Fund
Most of the participants stuck with the program, too: Eighty-five percent stayed for the first six months, and 64 percent stayed for all 12 months. That’s a higher retention rate than other prescription produce programs typically see. Maggie Wilkin, the study’s lead author and the director of research and evaluation at PHI, said the way the kits help participants prepare meals provides a low barrier for participation — the education classes are optional and the kits are delivered by DoorDash, which partners with over 300 anti-hunger organizations.
And it certainly helps that the food is enjoyable. “The feedback we get on these recipes is phenomenal,” said Alex Marapao, a nutrition educator at Stockton’s food bank who is responsible for packaging the meal kits. She curated them with the town’s predominantly Latino population in mind, developing recipes that were nutrient-dense and culturally appropriate, while exposing people to new, easy-to-prep dishes like pressed kale salads. They’ll also throw in staple foods such as eggs, brown rice, or Greek yogurt, depending on what’s available.
Francesca Castro, a clinical research dietitian at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center who was not involved in the study, was encouraged by the results. “The diabetes results are definitely promising, especially the retention rate,” she told Civil Eats. However, she still considers it preliminary. “These studies are helpful to build the bigger argument and to help build the case for more rigorous studies down the line,” she said.
“In general, as we get more and more research, we’re learning that diet plays a role in everything,” added Castro.
Building the Case for Prescription Meal Kits
Currently, doctors refer patients to the Healthy Food Rx program, but the hope is for it to be one day prescribed by doctors and funded by Medicaid and private insurance.
Food as medicine programs are now in the early stages of being formalized into health care settings and insurance coverage. So far, a handful of states — including Massachusetts, Oregon, California, Arkansas, New Jersey, and North Carolina — have received temporary approval by the federal government to cover food as medicine programs under Medicaid. The approval was granted in most states through a five-year, experimental waiver.
“We have fortunately a lot of programs being integrated into Medicaid right now under our federal waiver. The goal is that these will be permanent benefits under Medicaid here in California,” said Katie Ettman, the food and agriculture policy manager at the think tank SPUR and a member of the Food as Medicine Collaborative. “The idea is that we’re setting up long-term sustainable funding and access for patients.”
Last year, SPUR and the Food as Medicine Collaborative worked with lawmakers to introduce a bill that would make California’s food as medicine programs a permanent provision of the state’s health insurance plans under Medicaid, but it didn’t make it through the state legislature. Ettman said they plan to introduce it again later this year.
“The feedback we get on these recipes is phenomenal,” said Alex Marapao. Credit: Abbott Fund
Prior to the use of this waiver, food as medicine programs were largely philanthropic efforts by nonprofits or hospitals with community benefit spending. “They were … helping to improve health outcomes, but they weren’t necessarily being treated like any other health care provision,” Ettman said. The programs often benefit from philanthropic efforts, but that funding can be sporadic and short term, leaving patients hanging.
“I remember the moment when we [had to tell patients], ‘This is the last prescription that we can give out,”’ said Emma Steinberg, a pediatric hospitalist dividing her time between San Francisco and Boston. “It’s a pretty terrible feeling as a provider to have had this really amazing tool that works well … and then have to be like, “Oh, sorry, no, we can’t do that anymore, because there’s just no money for it.”
Yet Steinberg is hopeful that this will begin to shift as the evidence continues to build for the role of nutrition programs in managing chronic disease. It’s a connection that she said became more glaring during the early pandemic. “Unfortunately, we saw during Covid that diet-sensitive diseases were a huge predictor of more severe disease,” she said.
The Future of Diabetes Care in Stockton
Since the early pandemic, people in Stockton have faced deepening food insecurity. The town’s emergency food bank has observed a steady uptick in clients. In 2022, the food bank reports that it served nearly 300,000 families from the town and surrounding country, which has a population below 800,000 people. This surpasses the number of families it served in 2019 by 141 percent. Both a rise in food prices and end to pandemic-era food aid have made the lack of access to food there much more dire.
This makes food interventions, like the Healthy Food Rx program, all the more critical. But like many food as medicine pilots, it’s not clear how long it will continue. “We are looking into ways to make this program more sustainable over the long term,” said Maggie Wilkin, the study’s lead author. While the initial study has ended, she said they will soon start recruiting for another study on the Healthy Food Rx program, while expanding the food box deliveries to 800 to 1,000 participants from Stockton.
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Wilkin also points to how the program’s local partnerships — with the food bank and the referring federal health clinic — have helped participants continue to receive nutrition and diabetes support even after their 12-month cohort wrapped up. Some are still visiting the food bank.
“It’s really important that you have that infrastructure to provide some sort of sustained health outcomes rather than just a one-time produce prescription,” said Wilkin, who adds that the program is part of a wider support network for diabetes patients.
Participant Shane Bailey is continuing to receive food boxes for another few months as part of an ongoing study. “I think it should continue forever,” she said. “I would love to have the box every week, not every other week.” Regardless, she won’t stop making a beeline for the produce section for her new favorite foods every time she enters the grocery store.
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