Preserve our foods, protect our lands, feed our people:

• -- by Shirley Darling

 

Several Perth Dupont Community Garden members met with Gregorio Ajcot Sosof (Goyo) and translator Val Croft on Sunday morning, March 10 for an informative talk about permaculture methods and growing techniques. Goyo was invited to Canada from Guatemala by the Maritime-Guatemala Breaking The Silence Network to share his insights and experience working with Mayan communities in the central highlands on the south edge of Lake Atitlán.

 

Goyo works for Mesoamerican Institute of Permaculture which makes land available to landless Mayan’s to grow and share organic food and for saving native seeds which are returned to IMAP’s seed bank and redistributed – with the goals of creating self sufficiency, biodiversity, ecological sustainability and provide long term food security and sovereignty, and more.

Culturally appropriate, sustainable environments and practices of permaculture are the foundation of their indigenous agro-forestry systems which also grow a wide variety of medicinal and edible plants. Planting methods use ancestral knowledge, knowledge coming directly from nature and modern knowledge.

They have some unusual growing techniques such as growing in stacked tires and with a banana swath or circle, tailored to the local environment and incorporating the ancient practices and beliefs of the Mayan people.

 

Goyo provided a planting demonstration using the Patel Family’s plot in which he made circles and pathways while explaining how plants thrive together. For example, modern methods of planting in rows wastes space, compresses soil and isn’t natural – nature doesn’t grow this way and plants don’t thrive! You could sense that we were learning ancient knowledge and when Goyo was talking about plants growing together in circles, I heard him say “plants like it better.”