Collecting grasshoppers among polycultural fields

Today was a bit like a dream come true - here goes:

This is a photo of the morning light falling on the twin volcanoes Popocatepetl and Iztaccihuatl. Popocatepetl, on the left, is both active and 'male', while Ixtaccihuatl, his wife according to legend, is neither - if you look at the silhouette you can just about see the outline of a woman, laid down, hands folded across her chest.

Together they depict a sort of Mexican Romeo and Juliet, or many a modern marriage, perhaps. She lies sleeping (/dead), while he fumes.

Anyway! Back to today, which began both with the view shown above, and this too, below:

Fields in the early morning mist - it could be England, or anywhere - until you notice the spiky maguey cactuses, which mark the boundary lines, and it's definitely Mexico.

Today, we were visiting an NGO, Proyecto de Desarrollo Rural Integral, that works with farmers in a small municipality in the north of Tlaxcala state, to see if we might be able to work together to understand the social, economic and environmental implications of rejecting chemical pesticides and harvesting chapulines (grasshoppers) - just like everyone used to do before monoculture took over.

This is Panfilo Hernandez Ortiz, of Projecto de Desarrollo Rural Integral (the integrated rural development project), showing us a 'net'-ful of tiny chapulines that he has just swept through the edge of a polycultural maize-bean field in Vincente Guerrero. 

Vincent Guerrero is a village of 573 inhabitants, named after a revolutionary general, where the morning serenity is broken by fireworks summoning people to church/work. A bit of a contrast from the jingles transmitted by loudspeaker in the Japanese countryside, but I was sold.  

Speaking of Japan, check this out:

Sure, it may look like a badly-shot photo of a couple of Mexican farmers (and yes, it is) - but look closely! Anyone keen on cultigens (I'm sure I have a wide audience here. Well, I would if only the other 60% of the world had internet access) will see that maize is being intercropped with squash. This is a system that increases soil nitrogen and agricultural productivity, which first I learnt about here in Zimbabwe and South Africa. It's something that I tried to implement in Japan, with some (pretty minor) success.. But, of course, both crops originated here in Mexico.

Anyway, back to the grasshoppers. Here they are up close:

Still almost invisible, right?

The harvesting season in this region is Sept-Oct, depending on the weather, so they're not ready just yet.

For the time being, they'll be left to explore any food source they can find among the fields and their borders. Meanwhile, we'll try to figure out a way of addressing the research questions mentioned at the beginning of this post... and perhaps by the time autumn arrives, we'll have both a plentiful grasshopper harvest AND a strong protocol to celebrate!

(Actually, it was such a successful day that we began our celebrations early. Grasshoppers cannot be harvested in Vicente Guerrero yet, but Pulque - a milky, mucilaginous cactus beer that tastes about a hundred times better than this description - certainly can...)