In the highlands of Mexico, family corn farmers rely on ancestral knowledge and a climate that has become increasingly unpredictable.
In the opening line of Suave Patria, one of Mexico’s most celebrated poems, Ramón López Velarde offers a striking definition of his homeland: “its surface is made of corn.” Nearly a century later, those words still ring true. There may be no country more deeply intertwined with a single crop than Mexico is with maize.
Around 10,000 years ago, somewhere in what is now Mexico, Indigenous communities domesticated a wild grass known as teosinte, giving rise to the crop that today covers more of the Earth’s surface than any other. Rich in starch, remarkably adaptable, and capable of thriving across vastly different climates, corn has nourished civilizations, reshaped landscapes, and become one of humanity’s defining foods.
But in Mexico, corn became far more than just a staple crop. It entered mythology—the Maya believed the gods shaped humankind from corn dough—and gave rise to a food culture with the highest maize diversity on the planet. At the height of Mesoamerican civilization, there were likely hundreds of native landraces, or indigenous breeds of corn. Today, experts recognize 64 landraces, 59 of which are strictly native to Mexico. That number is in decline as industrial agriculture transforms global food systems, threatening the future of Mexico’s native corn varieties.
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