Outside Resources

Explore our recommended list of credible resources in a variety of forms that suit your learning style. We welcome suggestions; please email us at info@exploringsolutionspast.org or fill out this form.

Articles

Podcasts

Botanical Databases

Books

The Maya Forest Garden: Eight Millennia of Sustainable Cultivation of the Tropical Woodlands

by Anabel Ford and Ronald Nigh

It is a common belief that the ancient Maya disappeared and their population became too large to be supported with the known traditional farming practices. In this book, Ford and Nigh respond to this and many of today’s misconceptions about the Maya civilization.

Purchase the book on Routledge,  Amazon, and Barnes and Noble.

The Maya Forest Garden of El Pilar: A Plant Coloring Book

by Anabel Ford

It is a coloring book and it’s aimed at standard three students as part of the African and Maya history curriculum. It includes both the English and Spanish version.

Look Inside and Download Sample Pages

Purchase the book at 12 Belize

The One-Straw Revolution

by Masanobu Fukuoka

Fukuoka demonstrates how the way we look at farming influences the way we look at health, the school, nature, nutrition, spiritual health and life itself. He joins the healing of the land to the process of purifying the human spirit and proposes a way of life and a way of farming in which such healing can take place.

Purchase the book on  Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Target

A World Without Soil: The Past, Present, and Precarious Future of the Earth Beneath Our Feet

by Jo Handelsman

A celebrated biologist’s manifesto addressing a soil loss crisis accelerated by poor conservation practices and climate change.

Purchase the book at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Target.

Videos

Is the Maya Forest Garden the key to sustainable agriculture? by Odyssey Earth (8 minutes)

El Pilar Archaeological Reserve for Maya Flora and Fauna by
MesoAmerican Research Center
(9 minutes)

El Pilar: Preserving the Maya Legacy by University of California, Santa Barbara (19 minutes)

Counter Mapping by Go Project Films (10 minutes)

Maya Milpa and the Relevance of Ancient Agriculture Today w/ Dr. Anabel Ford & Luis Marcos by Green Cover Seed (58 minutes)

Partner Organizations

Exploring Solutions Past

A outreach-based non-profit focused on preserving the Maya forest as a cultural resource of global significance

MesoAmerican Research Center

A research base that seeks to develop a broad understanding of the people, cultures, and environment of the Maya Forest

Related Organizations

A Growing Culture

A nonprofit bridging the gap between Indigenous/peasant farmer communities and media

Comunidad Maya Pixan Ixim

A Maya-led nonprofit improving the health and wellbeing of Maya people in Nebraska and the United States through community development strategies

Regenerate Nebraska

A hub for communities, producers, and organizations
across Nebraska to collaborate and build a unified and
intersectional regenerative movement

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