for over twenty years we saw farmers plowing fields with yoked bulls and we watched the maize grow fed by seasonal rains. Over the years curiosity grew, what had been visually stimulating at first began to become compelling. What exactly were we seeing? Why this old fashioned approach to agriculture? Was this about food, tradition, poverty, the past, the present or all of these. From that first sight of a campesino with his Zebu bulls yoked to handmade wooden plow we learned that this form of agriculture called milpa is ancient, modern, complex and sustaining.
The Milpa Project was built one observation, one idea, one friend, one tortilla at a time. It came to life during a Christmas stay in the community of San Felipe del Agua on the flank of the mountains east of Oaxaca City. It was there that we met our collaborators Mauro Perez Cruz, Blanca Cue and Andy Keith and thought about the winter fallow milpa that lay in the valley below our rented house.
The Milpa Project is built around a portfolio of photographs that document all stages of the milpa and the way this ancient form of agriculture sustains and informs life in San Felipe, a community at the heart of the birthplace of corn. The purpose of the project is to broaden knowledge and document one of the world's best examples of sustainable agriculture. The 21st Century, its technology, expanding globalization and the pressure of modernity threatens the milpa and all it provides — tradition, community, food for the body and sustenance for the spirit. We hope the Milpa Project will do its part to reduce the threat.
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