“Our” Milpas Illustration Exercise: Explorations in Environmental Visual Demonstrative

In Fall 2024, students in WWU’s ENVS 499D: Readings in Environmental Justice are reading about regenerative agriculture. This post reflects some of the group’s learning and discussion.

By Chris Paradowski, Gwen Touney, and Flynn Williamson

Introduction

We prepared a series of discussion questions based on Chapter 3 of Healing Grounds by Liz Carlise for students to come to class prepared to create milpas systems. We asked them to bring a written response to one open ended question and one technical question that offers opportunity for students to approach the milpas topic with multiple levels of analysis and leaves the conversation open to different voices. Milpas are a traditional Latin American farming practice, otherwise known as three-sisters polyculture. Usually featuring corn, beans, and squash, this method promotes biodiversity and soil health, proving to produce much larger and healthier yields than industrial farms. They also provide food security and community to rural regions. After reading chapter three of Liz Carlisle’s Healing Grounds: Climate, Justice, and the Deep Roots of Regenerative Farming, our class created our own milpas, incorporating not just what we learned from Aidee Guzman’s research and lived experiences (the feature of the chapter), but also from our class’s body of knowledge. Here are the results.

Methodology

We wanted to focus our in-class time on a visualization project instead of the typical discussion break out group with guided questions. We held a short break out session to dig deeper into commentary in chapter 3 before moving into the milpas illustration exercise.

“Our” Milpas Results

Students collaborated on illustrating and visualizing a milpas and its surrounding community. Although students used fast illustrations with colored marker, complex background ideas from the text and broader themes from environment studies also were present. Students symbolized riparian zones, poly cultures, and infrastructure. They added community space and even envisioned spaces for wildlife. They collaborated to create an image of the society they would want to live in. The value can not be understated that visualization plays a role in learning and planning and should be a more common theme in education models. We often struggle to find solutions to complex ecological problems. Perhaps visualizing communities and ecosystems is a better solution than simply taking turns on the armchair proposing alternatives to what we have now.

One group was inspired by one student’s study abroad experience in Puerto Rico, where they visited a beautiful farm focused on community and environmental sustainability. What this group emphasized was community members’ access and providing a wide variety of food. The group incorporated smaller plots, containing corns, beans, and squash, between fruit trees, beehives, and chicken coops. Copying the geographic features of the Puerto Rican farm, they drew a river in the middle of the land, providing a consistent water source. They also included a community center, complete with a kitchen and dining area, and in close proximity to housing and the farm’s salad greens and herb plot.

Another group found that focusing on an agroforestry setup could incorporate the ideas of a milpas with the resources we have here in the Pacific Northwest. Attention focused on ensuring that local varieties of plants and mushrooms were central to the agricultural practices of their milpas. Irrigation from local water sources, plentiful in the region, was also considered to provide a sustainable source of water that didn’t necessitate intensive water usage. Lastly, the group was able to discuss the human implication to agricultural labor in the region, recognizing that many of the challenges laborers face in the book, are true here too.  The group discussed that in their example of a milpas, labor challenges would have to be considered in an equitable and fair way that ensures health, safety, and community needs are addressed.

Students can successfully imagine complex systems through simple illustrations (visual demonstratives) and visualize the transcorporeal framework that holds together our food webs, which on its own is no small task.