Skip to main content
Glite Dictionary
🌽 A crop field 🪴 Traditional mixed farming
milpa

milpa

9.9
A traditional way in Mexico and Central America of growing corn, beans, and squash together and rotating fields
  • noun
  • /ˈmɪlpə/
  • Specialized
: milpa
  • During the rainy season, many families rely on their milpa to produce food for the community.

Examples

  • In Mesoamerica, farmers cultivate a milpa by planting maize, beans, and squash together to enhance soil health.

  • The Maya practice traditional migratory or long-fallow subsistence (milpa) agriculture, live in scattered settlements, and supplement their household income by hunting and gathering forest products and working as laborers.

    Academic text (1997)

  • With the growing scarcity of land in the region (Goldin 1989), many Almolonguenos were forced to seek alternative means of support relative to traditional milpa production.

    Academic text (1991)

  • The traditional milpa system allows for biodiversity by rotating different crops each year.

Surface Forms

milpa singular
milpas plural

Etymology

The word milpa comes from Nahuatl and first meant 'corn field'. Over time it became the name for the traditional way of planting corn, beans and squash together and rotating plots each season, so milpa now means this village farming system that helps keep the soil healthy.