The Harvest

Amaranth is planted in June and harvested in November. You can practically take advantage of all of the plant and its use is diverse, both the seeds and the leaves as well as the popped cereal and the flour.

In the Red Amaranto Mixteca, those involved share their experiences and the machinery. Doña Carmen said that now they have a popper with which they can transform the seed and thus use it as a cereal in desserts, salads, sauces, breads, broths and stews. When the process is manual, it is slower when done on a comal or casserole over low heat.

“In the Mixteca Amaranth Network office we have a popper for all producers; with it we achieve greater amounts. We carry our seed at a cost of 6 pesos per kilo. We are now in the process of buying a mill to make amaranth, wheat and other seed flour.”

The raw seed  is used to make cookies and breads. The popped cereal is for breading, as well as for preparing fresh water and atole.

“I make tortilla chips with the popped cereal, the raw one becomes chewy. As for sales, the processed and ground seed reaches 28 pesos per kilo, the flour, 35 pesos and the popped cereal, 60 pesos ”.

The entire plant is used. With the thresher, they separate the straw and then soak it in water for two hours or until it gets a reddish hue similar to hibiscus flowers. This is added to the tortilla chips, something they want to perfect with the dehydrators they manufacture in Putla.

Amaranth in the kitchen

Doña Carmen told us that the leaf is used in soups, fresh waters, and tortillas. “I put it in the beef or pork broth. My grandchildren eat the leaf in broth, in salad and in tamales, something that fascinates them because when large leaves are given, they wrap the nixtamal with mole and chicken.

They eat it with everything, they are very small (…) Amaranth gives us sustenance. When I was sick, my daughter helped me with the expenses by selling the tototpos. Being younger makes it easier for them to work and sell them. With that they buy me fruit in addition to giving me my pennies,” she said proudly.

Now she, like many other women in her community, plant amaranth in her fields, avoiding the use of chemical fertilizers and taking advantage of her cows’ manure. “It’s beautiful what’s happening. In 100 square meters I was given about 16 kilos of grain for our consumption and for sale,” concluded Señora Abundia.

These are 10 terms to understand sustainable agriculture and food sovereignty. If these two concepts sound foreign to you, it is enough to know that both are based on the fact that food is not a commodity, but a fundamental human right that must take care of people, their cultures and the environment.

It has been said that among the global challenges we face today are crop shortages, poor diet (and diseases caused by it) and the rapid degradation of natural resources. In this sense, sustainable philosophy is totally opposed to industrial agriculture with fertilizers and chemicals, with transgenic and monoculture crops.

Terms to Understand Sustainable Agriculture

1. Sustainable Agriculture

The type of agriculture that thinks about the consumer’s well-being throughout the entire food chain, in the short, medium, and long term. It guarantees fair income, environmental health and social and economic equity.

2. Agroecology

A scientific discipline, a set of practices, and a social movement. Looking for sustainable systems that optimize and stabilize crops, it considers multifunctional agricultural approaches, promotes social justice, nurtures identity and culture and reinforces the economic viability of rural areas.

3. Food Sovereignty 

The ability of communities to produce and consume their own food with their own political, social, cultural, and environmental rules. It is only possible through agroecology, which integrates traditional knowledge with agronomy.

4. Organic Fertilizers

Substances that contain wastes of animal, vegetable or mixed origin, which are added to the soil in order to improve their nutrition. Some examples are biol and vermi-compost, which are the controlled decomposition of organic matter that helps nourish the soil with minerals and other components necessary for good harvests in sustainable agriculture.

5. Polycultivation

A type of agriculture that uses multiple crops on the same plot. An example is the milpa that integrates squash, beans, corn, fruit trees, chelites, chilies and more on the same land. It is positive for crop diversification and soil nutrition. It can be used on a larger scale if traditional knowledge is combined with practice, experience and innovation for agricultural management.

6. Social Enterprises

Autonomous and dynamic organizations that are formed with a group of partners (who may or may not be family members) with initiatives, interests and skills in common; that is to say, a business model that prioritizes community participation oriented to the economic growth of all the members.

7. Biodiversity

The variety of life: it covers all the species of plants, animals, fungi and microorganisms that inhabit the planet. It also includes ecological and evolutionary processes at the genetic, species, and landscape levels.

8. Responsible Consumption

When consumers take into account the social, environmental and ethical sphere when choosing a product or service and demand transparency and traceability in the processes.

9. Smallholder Farmer Technology

The knowledge and development of methods, procedures, tools, techniques and equipment of a given community. It has social, collective and environmental preservation bases with natural biological cycles and a holistic worldview of the environment. It develops its rules and methods independently from those of large-scale agribusiness.

10. Social Economy

Economic development that is based on community, democracy, trust schemes, social ownership of resources, equitable distribution of benefits among its members and social commitment in favor of all members. For a social economy to be successful, cohesion is very important.

What Does Sustainable Agriculture Implement? 

The challenge for sustainability, in Karina’s words, is to generate knowledge and access other practices that complement the traditional ones, that contribute and innovate with appropriate technologies. She adds that sometimes this type of knowledge can be romanticized and remain on small scales of backyard and family production. But she adds that this may be scaled to hectares and larger productions (up to 14 or 15 hectares, if applicable).

Are the terms “agro-ecological” and “organic” different?

The challenge for sustainability, in Karina’s words, is to generate knowledge and access other practices that complement the traditional ones, that contribute and innovate with appropriate technologies. She adds that sometimes this type of knowledge can be romanticized and remain on small scales of backyard and family production. But she adds that this may be scaled to hectares and larger productions (up to 14 or 15 hectares, if applicable).

Leer los artículos aquí:

Amaranto, comer justo y sano en Oaxaca

Productores oaxaqueños impulsan el consumo de amaranto 

El amaranto, un gigante desconocido

Recetas para aprovechar el amaranto

Cada año, con motivo de la Guelaguetza, el fotoperiodista italiano y X-Photographer de Fujifilm, Alex Coghe, organiza una expedición fotográfica en Oaxaca, donde los participantes aprenden sobre fotoperiodismo, fotografía documental, así como street photography y otros estilos.

A continuación, el propio Alex Coghe nos cuenta sobre su más reciente expedición fotográfica y nos comparte imágenes captadas por su cámara sobre el proyecto Puente a la Salud Comunitaria.

Puente a la Salud Comunitaria

Desde hace varios años mantengo una colaboración con la ONG Puente a la Salud Comunitaria y estaba interesado en dar a conocer su trabajo en apoyo al cultivo de amaranto en Oaxaca; y esta expedición fue la oportunidad perfecta.

La misión de Puente a la Salud Comunitaria es contribuir a la soberanía alimentaria y a mejorar la salud y el bienestar de las comunidades rurales de México, a través del cultivo, transformación, consumo y comercialización de amaranto. Los alimentos procesados importados son una causa importante de mala nutrición, y esto afecta sobre todo a las familias de campesinos.

Entre los estados más pobres de México, Oaxaca -un estado predominantemente indígena-, con una población de aproximadamente 3.3 millones de personas, se ve afectado por el problema de la desnutrición estimándose que el 36% de sus niños, la padecen.

Misión amaranto

El compromiso de Puente a la Salud Comunitaria es favorecer el acceso a ofertas alimentarias locales de calidad, trabajando en las regiones de la Mixteca y el Valle Central de Oaxaca, con 30 comunidades rurales. Gracias a técnicos altamente capacitados que trabajan en todas las etapas de la cadena de suministro; desde el cultivo de amaranto hasta su transformación, se promueve su consumo y comercialización.

Esta comercialización ha estimulado la creación de programas y talleres de verano dirigidos a niños, los cuales están enfocados hacia la creación de una cultura adecuada en favor del cultivo y consumo de amaranto.

Las actividades inculcan la cultura de respeto al medio ambiente, el conocimiento básico de la planta y permiten la integración de los pequeños y sus familias a través de juegos.

Esta colaboración la hago por el crecimiento que me deja en mi corazón y porque inevitablemente influencia toda mi fotografía. Todo mi trabajo y esfuerzo están enfocados, sobre todo, en documentar a través de imágenes un punto de vista y una reflexión social y antropológica de las diferentes situaciones del país.

On a sunny Friday morning in San Pablo Huitzo, a town in the Valles Centrales region of Oaxaca, Mexico, a half-dozen women are gathered for a workshop on making alegrías, a healthy, granola bar-like snack made with popped amaranth seeds. Their ingredient list is short: water, honey, raisins, a form of raw cane sugar known as piloncillo, and lime juice.

“The trick,” explains the event’s gracious host, Maria Lopez, “is to get the syrup to the right temperature” before adding the tiny orbs of amaranth, each barely bigger than a grain of coarse sand.

This could be any chatty gathering of neighborhood cooks in any kitchen in the world, except that in Oaxaca, amaranth is not just a fad ingredient. The ancient indigenous plant is part of a movement to revive native crops and cuisines, and a means of restoring the physical health and economy of their state, one of the poorest in Mexico.

The alegría gathering is one of six weekly microenterprise workshops that the nonprofit Puente a la Salud Comunitaria (Bridge to Community Health) holds with 25 different groups in Oaxaca. Founded in 2003 by two American volunteers in Oaxaca seeking a solution to the high rate of birth defects and childhood malnutrition in rural areas, Puente quickly hit on the idea of reintroducing amaranth into the local diet, explains Pete Noll, the organization’s executive director.

High in protein and other nutrients, amaranth is also drought-resistant and profitable, netting local farmers three to five times the profit of other locally grown grain crops.

Puente soon began working with small farmers to strengthen local economies through the sustainable cultivation of amaranth, known as amaranto in Spanish. As national obesity rates rose precipitously — Mexico has surpassed the U.S. in the number of overweight adults — Puente took on fighting both malnutrition and obesity. To date, the organization has worked with 6,000 families in over 80 communities to help incorporate amaranth and other healthy foods into their diet.

In ancient Mesoamerica amaranth was known as huautli, meaning “the smallest giver of life,” and was grown in large quantities similar to that of maize. When the Spanish arrived in the 16th century, amaranth all but disappeared from the native diet. No one knows for sure why. One theory holds that the edible sculptures of Aztec deities made of amaranth, corn and honey — and perhaps laced with human blood — were a pagan threat to Spanish Catholicism.

Back at the Lopez household, after the alegría ingredients have been mixed, the women spread the mixture on a sheet of buttered paper held in a wooden frame, cut it into squares and taste the final product. The verdict: universal thumbs up. The next steps, explains Hope Bigda-Peyton, Puente’s director of development and sustainability, will be for the group to figure out costs, pricing and profit margins. Once they’ve developed their packaging and logo, they can sell their alegrías at local markets and restaurants, or at the two amaranth specialty shops that Puente operates.

Not far from where Lopez lives, in the town of Suchilquitongo, tender young amaranth leaves sprout between rows of corn on Minerva Cruz’s farm. One of close to 250 farmers that Puente works with, Cruz is in her third year of cultivating amaranth. “It’s a very noble plant and it has a lot of traditional value. That’s what caught my attention,” she explains.

Cruz has lent her farm to Puente for five years to serve as an amaranth processing center. Thanks to a federal grant, the farm recently got prototype machines that thresh and clean the plant’s seeds, which has vastly increased efficiency. It “is a really big step [forward] for Puente,” Noll says.

In the brick warehouse adjacent to the machines, Gerardo Lopez, head of Puente’s agricultural extension program, shows how each bag of amaranth seeds is carefully labeled to indicate the varietal it contains and how it was grown. Most of Puente’s farmer partners practice what’s known as agroecological farming — which prizes maintaining biodiversity — or are “in transition” to these methods.

Farmers like Cruz who grow amaranth have also developed a repertoire of recipes for the plant. Although the seed, flour and leaves of the bushy plant can all be consumed, cereal (the popped seeds) is the most commonly used form in Mexico. Cruz’s mother likes to add the leaves to water and blend them with lime peel to make an agua fresca.

Last summer, to promote the use of amaranth in cooking, Puente partnered with well-known Oaxaca City chefs to create new dishes featuring amaranth. Pilar Cabrera of La Olla created an amaranth leaf and grain salad, amaranth sweet bread, breaded amaranth chicken and an amaranth smoothie. Rodolfo Castellanos of Origen created a hamburger on an amaranth bun and a chocolate cake topped with amaranth cereal and red plum ice cream.

Puente’s farmer network has so far exported to only one source outside the country, Toronto’s ChocoSol Traders. There, founder Michael Sacco and chef Chrystal Porter are perfecting a recipe for a “complete-protein tortilla,” made with amaranth, chia seeds and maize.

At Las Quinces Letras in Oaxaca City, chef/owner Celia Florián has hosted amaranth cooking demonstrations by women farmers. She also likes to highlight amaranth and other traditional ingredients prepared in healthy and delicious ways, like her sublimely refreshing agua fresca, filled with strands of the chilacayote squash and its seeds, pilonicillo, bits of lime peel and popped amaranth seeds. Another favorite dish involves blanching amaranth leaves in hot water, squeezing them dry, coating them with beaten egg, breading and frying them. The dish is served with a salsa of pumpkin seeds, or in soup.

“We encourage water over soda at the restaurant,” says Florián. “Gradually people’s mindsets are changing” to healthier behaviors.

Susana Trilling runs a cooking school in Oaxaca. “I work with a lot of women from the mountains, and they use amaranth to make fritters and soups,” she says. “They boil the leaves in a clay pot with onion and garlic, and it’s always served with hard-boiled egg and Mexican rice.”

Trilling has taught some of these recipes at her school, and incorporates fresh amaranth in the summer months as part of her staff breakfast with hard-boiled eggs. “Especially during the amaranth appreciation campaign,” she adds, “people got excited” about the idea of using amaranth as an alternative to granola, in crepes, and in wafers Trilling makes with her students with amaranth flour and coconut.

If all these delicious uses are not enough to convince Oaxacans to consume more amaranth, Puente has another enticement up its sleeve.

Every October, on “Amaranth Day,” it sponsors the making of a giant tlayuda, a popular street food made by topping a corn tortilla with beans, cheese and chopped cabbage. In 2016 Puente made a 12-meter-square tlayuda, incorporating amaranth flour, cereal, seeds or leaves in every layer — from the tortilla dough to the topping of toasted grasshopper, avocado, radish and salsa.

“We thought it would last longer than it did!” recalls Bigda-Peyton. “It probably took all of 25 minutes for the crowd to finish eating it … a new take on an old favorite.”