Regenerative tales: A recipe for reviving Mexico City’s chinampas with Arca Tierra

Article written by Emma Chow, Photos Submitted by Emma Chow

Sometimes, people ask me: ‘What is the one thing that would really change the food system?’ My response is somewhat abstract and challenging to quantify, but for me, it is wholly true: for people to reconnect with their food. It’s the answer that rises naturally for me, because it is a product of my own personal journey. Growing up in Toronto, Canada, I visited a few apple farms on school trips and occasionally went fishing with my dad, but I didn’t really know much about food. After university, I found myself on organic farms volunteering through the Worldwide Organisation for Organic Farming online platform. For the first time in my life, I was responsible for planting and growing food. I was dependent on the ingredients grown in the soil I gazed at through my bedroom window. I was introduced to amazing flavours tucked away in vegetables that I previously thought I detested. I was spending my days under the heat of the sun and came to know the sweat and work that comes with stewarding the land. Suddenly, I saw food differently. I valued it differently. I shopped differently. I cooked differently. I managed scraps differently. As my own relationship with food evolved, my belief that others’ could too, and the subsequent positive impact, grew.

When I was 20 years old, I became obsessed with cities. I saw them as living organisms, ever-evolving and full of people and ideas. I was fascinated by the potential of cities — as hubs of innovation and places for creation — to be reimagined in ways that allow those who live there to experience greater levels of fulfillment. It was my love of cities that led me to dive into food systems work several years later, investigating cities as powerful intervention points for positive food system transformation. After all, 80% of all food is expected to be destined to feed cities by 2050 (Ellen MacArthur Foundation, 2019), so they can create big changes through their sheer demand power.

As my journey into food systems work continued, I turned from cities to food design. What is food design? It’s the way we create menus at restaurants and canteens, our favourite food products, and the offerings on grocery store shelves. It’s the choices we make that determine the food concepts, what ingredients are sourced and how those ingredients are produced. The way we design food matters. When it comes to the flavour, nutrition, and impact of our food, design is where everything begins.

While my fascination for cities never waned, my desire to spend prolonged periods of time in them has. The noises, congestion of people and traffic, and lack of wild Nature in cities renders their pull quite a bit weaker for me these days. Each stint off-grid in the jungle, or deep in retreat and trainings surrounded by Nature, made me hungry for even greater connection with Nature — real nature; the kind whose essence is wild and untouched, not the manicured lawns and strategically placed flowerbeds. I yearned for the quiet and the calm. I experienced the healing power of immersing in Nature. In the silence, I could finally listen. Sometimes, all it takes is some silence to really hear your inner knowing. Sometimes, all it takes is letting Nature seep into you through your senses to wake you up to your true nature that’s been there all along. Within our true nature lies innate wisdom that tells us what foods nourish us, how it should be grown, and what value food holds. At large, this connection with Nature and our food is rapidly dissolving, especially in urban centres where it is so easy to live life without ever visiting a farm; never even knowing where food comes from, how it is produced, or whose hard work and heart has gone into it.

Landing in Mexico, I was hesitant to spend much time in Mexico City, fearing that all the anticipated noise and business may undo all the good work I’d done over the course of my 3-month journey of self-regeneration. Eventually, I reluctantly ventured to Mexico City, as it was where my journey would complete and I was due to catch my final flight.

I didn’t expect to find a sense of peace in Mexico City, but I did. I didn’t expect to find wild nature in Mexico City, but I did. I didn’t expect to see first-hand the most elegant expression of the two facets of food I studied deeply — cities and food design — but I did.

I was introduced to an incredible organisation called, Arca Tierra. Their work is beautiful; their approach, innovative; and their vision, truly inspiring. I wish I had the words and space to share their entire story; however, their work is so multifaceted and interwoven that it would be challenging to coherently spell out the many threads. I don’t think any piece I write can fully do it justice, but I will do my best to share their story with you and wish that something from their model may be relevant to your local context, inspire sparks of hope within you, or serve as a guidepost for you to visit and experience all the abundance that is Arca Tierra, first-hand.

Arca Tierra does many things. They grow food regeneratively on four chinampas (floating gardens built by the Aztecs.) They aggregate and sell regeneratively-produced ingredients from a network of regional producers to households and restaurants in Mexico City. They pay farmers and their team fair wages, regardless of the local market rates. They deliver nutrient-rich foods to Mexico City residents’ doorsteps in subscription fruit and veg baskets. They sell products like peanut butter, honey, and regeneratively-produced meat on their online shop. They host public events to help people reconnect with the chinampas and develop skills to cook with fresh ingredients. They host private events where companies, organisations, and other groups can come and have an immersive food experience. They collaborate with top gastronomy and technical education institutions.

Discovering the potential of the Mexico City chinampas.

On a warm September morning, I boarded a bus and began my 90-minute trip on the public metro to Arca Tierra. I waited on the shores of the canals as a boat approached. Navigating the canals of Xochimilco I felt like I was cruising on the Venice of North America. On the boat, Chico from Arca Tierra shared some information: this area (7x the size of New York’s Central Park and home to 2% of the world’s total biodiversity) was once home to highly-productive chinampas that were a significant source of food for Mexico City, but today, 60% of the chinampas are abandoned. Why? Many farmers died during the war; others were attracted to farm labour opportunities in the US; and the Olympics hosted by Mexico City in 1968 attracted international tourists to the area who discovered the area, took photos, and triggered a wave of tourism that still dominates the area’s activities today. The area acts as an important ‘lung’ for Mexico City and provides other important ecosystem services, such as temperature and rainfall regulation, along with flood management. But food is a major provision that the chinampas were originally designed for by the Aztecs so long ago and the food production potential is ripe.

The best of both worlds — weaving together ancient and modern farming techniques.

We disembarked the boat and set foot on Arca Tierra’s four chinampas covering 2,000 square metres. An event with 40 or so visitors from Europe and the US was wrapping up in the outdoor dining area. I was first brought to an area near the water where two team members were preparing 32,000 little squares of dark soil, pressing each square — called a chapin — with a thumb and planting a seed inside. Staring mesmerised by the dark brownie-batter-like squares of soil, I could sense the nutrients packed in this soil dug up from the bottom of the canals. This ancient technique has been used across mesoamerica and continues to prove successful today, with 90-95% of the chapins sprouting seedlings within two weeks of finishing the seeding process that I observed.

We walked through the gardens and I saw syntropic farming in action; beautiful combinations of vegetables planted intentionally based on their symbiotic properties; soil covered with cut-back grasses; a vermi-compost system to turn what otherwise might end up as waste into nutrient-rich organic matter that goes back to the soil. In the centre of the radiating gardens lay a circular plot where I was in the company of many butterflies floating about — a flower garden planted to attract butterflies, who then act as pollinators. Smart. On their chinampas, Arca Tierra demonstrates how ancient and modern techniques can be blended together effortlessly.

Cultivating a collaborative dynamic with farmers.

The chinampas I visited represent just 8% of the total food Arca Tierra provides to restaurants and households in Mexico City. The rest of the food is sourced from the network of producers across neighbouring regions. Through this model, Arca Tierra can sufficiently satisfy demand with supply aggregated across multiple small-scale producers, who independently, might struggle to consistently meet the demand. Some foods are sold via Arca Tierra’s online shop, creating a one-stop shop to buy regeneratively-produced products. Other ingredients are sold directly to 40+ restaurants in Mexico City and put into the subscription baskets for households. Whilst simple, the power of Arca Tierra stepping into this vital role of managing supply and demand and aggregating small-scale sources of regeneratively-produced food should not be underestimated. From my experience, matching supply with demand across time and space seems to be one of the biggest challenges buyers face.

Redesigning menus for change.

Arca Tierra is taking a design-driven approach to spark the change we hope to see. I loved learning about Arca Tierra’s collaborative approach. They work closely with top chefs at these restaurants to determine which ingredients to plant 3+ months ahead of time. This is exactly the new collaborative dynamic outlined as a key action area in The Big Food Redesign (Ellen MacArthur Foundation, 2021). In such a relationship, farmers and chefs (and other ‘food designers’ as I like to say) can engage in a dialogue that opens up win-win opportunities. Rather than chefs designing their menus and then looking for ingredients after the fact, and farmers planting and looking for buyers after the fact, both groups can collaborate from the beginning to marry menu design with plot design. This union forges a relationship of deep reciprocity and collaboration.

Chefs and farmers have the chance to work together to experiment with underutilised ingredients and expand the diversity of what we grow and eat. Farmers can maximise their total food output and have greater financial security. Chefs know the origin stories of their ingredients and share this with their diners. This is powerful because chefs are the creative influencers of the food industry; they have platforms to effectively showcase ‘new’ ingredients in their dishes and begin transforming urban food cultures in a positive direction.

Reconnecting people with their food.

Beyond their work with restaurants and hospitality partners, Arca Tierra offers experiences to the public such as tours of their chinampas, cooking and fermentation workshops, and dining experiences with top innovative chefs. These events invite the public to make the same trip I did out of the city, suddenly find themselves immersed in Nature, and learn about food through their own senses. Through my own experience, it’s these sort of lived moments that engage all the senses that create the most meaningful impact. They hold the power to open people’s perception and understanding of food up, far beyond the grocery store shelves and fast food chains that line city streets. During immersive experiences, participants don’t talk about it, read about it, watch it — they live it. Through touching the soil, tasting diverse ingredients, seeing compost systems, hearing the stories of their food, they internalise the teachings. They feel it. They taste it. They smell it. Workshops give people new skills so they can feel more empowered in their own kitchens and seek out different ingredients when they go to the market or the shops. With learning opportunities like this, cooking more whole food from scratch becomes less daunting over time.

Mexico City residents can renew their relationships with food by ordering food basket subscriptions from Arca Tierra. Unlike going to the grocery store and choosing exactly what ingredients to place in their carts, households purchase baskets by weight and are allocated a set of nutrient-dense fruits and vegetables. The composition of their basket changes over the seasons according to what comes off the land, meaning customers become food designers in their kitchens as they decide what to make with the ingredients given to them. It’s all about providing people with nutritious food that regenerates the land while providing the right livelihoods to farmers and the Arca Tierra team of ~35 staff.

Birthing a new wave of ‘guardians of the earth.’

With 60% of the chinampas currently abandoned, there is great opportunity to revive the area’s production potential through innovative approaches. Through their NGO, Arca Tierra is dedicated to equipping current, or future, farmers with the training and education needed to become ‘guardians of the earth’ (a phrase I am borrowing from one of their team member’s shirts) in the chinampas. A pathway to empowering others to apply the ancient and modern techniques for realising the potential of the chinampas as regenerative food production regions and multiplying the environmental, economic, and social benefits generated.

I remember on the boat ride back looking at the abandoned chinampas all around me. I could see in my mind’s eye the rendering of a lush area whose rich soils produce nutritious food for those in the city. Through their dual-approach — building demand in the city while developing capacity to produce regeneratively in the region — combined with educational experiences, Arca Tierra offers a multi-faceted suite of solutions that gives me hope.

It gives me hope to see such collaborative models being put in action, especially in a place like the chinampas that holds so much innate potential. Models that demonstrate through a design-driven approach, we can give way to distributed regional food systems that build food supply resilience, make it easier and easier to eat nutritious whole food by default, and transform food cultures by reconnecting people with their food, all while generating benefits for Nature and people through the entire food journey. It’s possible. Not necessarily easy or common, but possible. And it all starts with the belief that we can grow differently, eat differently, cook differently, and most importantly, work together differently.

From the SGM Team: Thank you, Emma Chow for contributing this incredible article and for sharing your journey with us. We encourage all who wish to share their ideas to submit blog posts to communications@socialgastronomy.org