Mara, a FarmStart trainee, shares her family history with the land and how it connects to her current learnings and experiences at the Plot.
My journey towards working the land hasn’t been straightforward. I grew up in Mexico City around faded stories from my mom and grandmother about the Chinampas. This floating farming system used to cover the whole of the territory, which now houses 22 million people.
During my summer holidays as a child, we would visit my dad’s parents 450 miles away, my grandad would take my sister and me to the fruit farm to collect nanches and tamarind. My grandparents from both sides were farmers. However, my mother’s side in Mexico City lost its land to the state’s expropriation (the seizure of our property) in the 70s/80s, after the agrarian reform in 1915.
My mother’s family were Indigenous people who depended solely on their small piece of land. Their agricultural knowledge and identity as indigenous farmers were lost when the land was taken. My father’s family had access to institutional education and managed to keep their land, but not their interest in working it. Over two generations, my family’s relationship to land, agriculture, and indigeneity has been completely erased from our identity.
A few years ago, while working with textiles for the film and TV industry, I began to understand the links between industrially produced textiles and racism – specifically the implications of this industrial production for land sovereignty and food sovereignty.
While stuck in Mexico during the Covid lockdowns, I attended online seminars on antiracism and race literacy in the Mexican context. This helped me gain a better understanding of my family’s identity, my relationship with the land, and the indigenous struggle.
On my return to London, I joined the Zapatista Solidarity Network and participated in the facilitation of the Zapatista Journey for Life across Europe on their visit to the UK.
In January, I left London after 21 years and moved to Lancaster. I joined The Plot CSA’s FarmStart program to pursue a way of life aligned with my views on collective land stewardship, reciprocity towards the land, environment, and people, and the responsibilities that come from being residents of the global north.
FoodFutures attracted me with its commitment to transforming the district’s food system integrally. I’ve been involved in a non-profit organic market garden and witnessed the impact of climate change on the land. Our carrots keep dying; it’s June and the soil is still too wet and too cold. Last year, it was the opposite, according to Dionysios, the lead grower.
The financial barriers to land and training access are preventing young people from considering a career in the agricultural sector. Change is needed, and I believe it’s possible if we address these issues from an anti-colonial, anti-racist, and anti-patriarchal perspective.
Visit the Plot’s webpage here, to find out more about the FarmStart training programme.
