LAS CAÑADAS

Veracruz, Mexico
Tania de Alba, Ricardo Romero

Las Cañadas is a farming cooperative in the mountainous cloud forest of Veracruz, Mexico. The humid tropical highland ecosystem includes temperate canopy trees and tropical understory. Ricardo Romero, the founder of the project, has developed food production systems that expand on the cafetal, an agroforestry system in which farmers grow coffee in the understory, which sequesters carbon and diversifies the ecological functions of the cloud forest. The cafetal system, however, is rarely profitable for local farmers. Instead, Romero invested in an ecological restoration effort on 100 hectares by planting trees and reintroducing cattle to a silvopasture system that combines livestock production with trees. The system regenerates soil and captures horizontal precipitation, while sequestering carbon in the soil and woody tree biomass. The project has also grown a 2 hectare clumping bamboo forest to provide building materials, and grows perennial food crops, including trees, vines, palms and herbaceous perennials in an edible food forest. The project has opened its doors to outside guests who learn about carbon farming, silvopasture and managed grazing. While the project initially focused on ecological restoration, it has shifted to address resiliency against flooding, droughts and landslides in the region. Las Cañadas produces seeds in a nursery that ships agroforestry species throughout Mexico, as well as living plants that are adapted to the cloud forest climate as part of a network with other producers that seek to diversify the plants available in the country.

1998 - ongoing
556 acres
16000 feet above sea level

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