Oaxacan food activist Neftalí Durán thinks the food system as it stands is bound for a reckoning.
, Durán looks deep into the issues that have plagued the American agriculture system while offering solutions that he hopes will give rise to a fairer and more sustainable future.
What I ask of consumers is to be discerning and actually learn about what is going on out there in the world. There are different things we can do: We can choose, if able to, to explore more local foods. But we also live in a global society and a global food system, so if you eat at a restaurant — especially a fancy Mexican restaurant — you’ll notice a trend of corn coming all the way from Oaxaca to here.
Another layer to the story involves monocrops. People are usually growing espadin, [the most common type of agave, when making mezcal] because it takes the shortest amount of time to mature. But that is not good for the soil because if you’re clear-cutting fields to plant only one kind of agave, you are monocropping and therefore not using an Indigenous system. People can easily plant in-between the espadin, but that is not happening.
I am not going to say that I am happy with the government because, at the end of the day, it is a colonial government that doesn’t serve Indigenous purposes and Indigenous sovereignty. One of the only ways to measure President Joe Biden is to see what his priorities are when the farm bill comes around.
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