AGRICULTURAL ALTERNATIVES: moringa cultivation trial
PROJECT DURATION: 2004-2007
Yucatan, strangely enough, given its thin soil with its limestone base, has been an agricultural economy since before the Spanish conquest. Its history includes a time when it was among the richest of Mexican states -it is the third poorest today- because of the boom in the world market for henequen (also known as sisal). From roughly 1870 to 1940, demand for henequen fiber for rope and twine making made fortunes for landowners, and near slaves of many ordinary rural residents, who were tied to the large estates through various legal and debt based mechanisms.
Today, while henequen continues to be cultivated to some extent, it has lost its power on the world market because of synthetic alternatives and cultivation of a superior product in parts of Africa and Brazil. A large part of the Yucatecan population still depends on agricultural activities for a significant portion of its income, however. Low world prices for grain have affected the viability of corn as an income generator (see The WTO, Corn and Migration), and the vagaries of the weather, soil conditions, voracious insect populations, along with a lack of marketing infrastructure, make vegetable production precarious.
CTripleS worked with Floratech, a supplier of high quality natural ingredients to the cosmetics industry, to test the suitability of moringa oleifera to the environment of Yucatan. Moringa is a small tree native to India, although it is well distributed throughout the tropics through human introduction. Like neem, another Indian native, it is a rapidly growing small tree with multiple uses.
In January of 2004, with seed gathered in the wild in northern Mexico and provided by Floratech,we direct seeded our first sixteen trees. Unfortunately, although germination was excellent, we soon lost all but two to hungry iguanas. Shortly afterward, we seeded twelve plastic cups, where the trees remained until they were out six inches high. They were then transplanted to the field, and encased in elaborate double screen protectors until they were about eighteen inches tall, and judged strong enough to withstand some predation. Eleven months later, these trees ranged from six to fifteen feet tall, and were all flowering. The direct seeded survivor set its first seed, the part that we were particularly interested in for this trial.
We later transplanted to another small plot a slightly different variety, also from seed provided by Floratech. This moringa cross comes from seed gathered in Haiti This seed produced trees that are quite handsome, growing equally as fast as the first variety, but several years later, they remain poor seed producers in our region.
While the market for moringa oil is not as well developed as that for aloe vera or jojoba, for example, it may prove to be a viable cash crop for Yucatan, while providing other benefits to its cultivators in the form of animal forage, human food (the pods are widely consumed in south Asia), and shade provision for delicate vegetable crops. First, however, a reliable market needs to be identified or created.
