This story is a collaboration between The Associated Press and Mongabay. MEXICO CITY, Mexico — After years of working abroad in marine conservation, Cassandra Garduño returned home to find the chinampas of her childhood, Mexico City’s ancient floating farms, choked with pollution and abandoned. Instead of walking away, she bought a piece of land and began the hard work of cleaning, restoring and planting. Now, Cassandra is part of a small but determined group of farmers reviving these Aztec farming systems, where rich volcanic soil and canal water can produce harvests all year-round. A chinampa is an ingenious farming system developed in Mexico more than 1,000 years ago. Often called floating gardens, chinampas are small, rectangular plots of fertile land built on shallow lake beds. Farmers created them by layering mud, sediment and vegetation to form islands, which were reinforced with willow trees planted along the edges. Even today, the chinampas of Xochimilco in Mexico City are recognized by the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization as one of the most sustainable and productive agricultural systems in the world. Cassandra’s mission goes beyond food. Teaming up with researchers from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), Cassandra is helping to clean the water, protect the endangered axolotl (Ambystoma mexicanum) and share traditional knowledge with a new generation of chinampa farmers. Through farming, she’s reconnecting people with their land, their water and with each other — proving that ancient wisdom may hold the key to a sustainable future. Hands On – Stories…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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