The Del Cabo project; a Mexican collective exports organic produce to the U.S.A

Whole Earth Review, Spring, 1989 by Diana Friedman

WHEN SANDY BELIN AND LARRY JACOBS, two organic farmers from Pescadero, California, planned their first vacation to the warm seas and sunny skies of the Los Cabos region of Baja, Mexico, they intended to hike and swim like most of the other tourists there. But perpetual farmers that they were, it didn't take long for them to notice the agricultural potential of the region: fertile soils, ample water and warm sunny winters. Within a few days of their arrival, they began toying with the possibility of farming in San Jose del Cabo in the winter, when it was too cold in Pescadero. However, their plans changed dramatically when it became clear that there were already plenty of small farmers in the region. What there wasn't, was a market.

Now, four years later, Sandy and Larry, along with Steve Farrer, another organic farmer from California, spend each November to June in Baja co-directing the Del Cabo project, a network that airfreights the organically grown vegetables of the farmers of the Ejido San Jose del Cabo to the rapidly expanding organic and specialty markets in California. Instead of starting their own farm and competing with local growers and, as Larry and Sandy put it, "hiring a bunch of people to work for us and exploiting them," they went to work with the farmers. "The idea was," Larry says, "to teach [the growers] about organic farming and introduce them to a market they didn't have."

Although Los Cabos has always been a popular resort area, it did not experience the negative ramifications of being a tourist center until after 1973, when the completion of the first highway linking it to Tijuana ended its relative isolation. As the highway brought increasing numbers of visitors and hotels, many young people were pulled away from the farms to work in the more lucrative tourist industry. Although the tourist sector could certainly be commended for providing jobs, it no doubt offset this service by contributing a substantial rise in the costs of local goods and services while doing nothing to support local industries. Rather than buy locally grown food, for example, hotels import produce from large growers on the Mexican mainland, or frozen vegetables from the U.S.

This situation inspired Larry and Sandy to help the farmers of the Ejido San Jose del Cabo, one of hundreds of semi-collectives set up by the Mexican government's agrarian reform law of the 1920s. The object was to find a market for their produce so that both older and younger generations could continue to farm. The two North Americans were also motivated by their observation that those businesses not linked to tourism and the U.S. dollar had suffered even more in the last few years, as the peso continued to depreciate dramatically, and the Mexican economy had become increasingly dependent on the U.S. dollar. Local farmers, they concluded, had to be tied to U.S. currency either indirectly or directly, if they were to survive.

It is easy to see how Sandy and Larry fell in love with the Los Cabos region of Baja; large jagged granite peaks tower over farming valleys and small desert cacti march right to the sea, adorning parking lots and oceanfronts. This area of Baja is distinct from the rest of the desert peninsula, for it lies in a temperate zone and has plenty of water for farming. In the autumn, wild rains come flying through the area, bringing fertile silt to the fields. And while the lands of San Jose may look barren and infertile, they produce a dazzling array of cucumbers, zucchini, tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants.

LARRY AND SANDY met on an organic farm in Maine 12 years ago and have been working and farming together ever since. It takes only a moment of observing them moving slowly through the fields, stopping to inspect a tomato or cucumber plant, to see that to them, organic farming means accepting a stewardship for the earth.

Their particular commitment to farming without synthetic chemicals in Mexico results from their experiences with unregulated agricultural production in other parts of Mexico. "You couldn't have fabricated a worse situation," Larry says. "I've seen Mexican workers mixing Malathion with no rubber gloves or masks, just their bare hands, and then spraying it underfoot. The people who sell this stuff don't care."

The del Cabo project is commendable because it offers safer and healthier modes of production, but with the high prices its produce commands, it would not be successful unless consumers were concerned about safe consumption. And clearly they are, judging by the constant sell-out of del Cabo produce. Many shoppers in the San Francisco Bay area, well aware of the hazards of eating non-seasonal produce from other countries, have welcomed the high-quality and clean del Cabo produce not only because it is one of the few positive alternatives to eating unsafe Mexican produce in the winter, but also because it provides practically the only available organic supply of summer vegetables from December to April.