ACA
Organic Training Gardens
on Lake Chapala

How ACA formed

The first project was conceived and initiated by the co-directors Wendee Hill and Marie Pruden, an experienced horticulturist and community organizer. Hill and Pruden were called to Mexico in 1992 to work as instructors in the Lake Chapala area through the auspices of the Catholic diocese of McKenzie, N.W.T., Canada.

In 1994 they were asked by the Catholic priest in the village of Nestipac to facilitate the opening of a community center offering classes in gardening, health and nutrition. Their close involvement with this very low-income Mexican community gave them a feeling of great rapport with the villagers and a deep concern for its problems of environmental damage, poverty, malnutrition, and lack of training and employment possibilities.

On the most basic level, many problems such as malnutrition, diminishing fishing industry in Lake Chapala, inadequate access to land and water for home gardens, the declining fertility of the soil and water contamination, are solvable. The widespread use of chemical pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers in almost all the commercial fields are leaving un-trained laborers unprotected, exposed to dangerous chemical substances that are endangering their health.

The widespread reliance on these “wonder products” has caused the local farmers to abandon, even lose their understanding, of older, more ecologically sound farming practices.

Finally, the resulting ecological imbalance of the land and the destruction of many beneficial plants, insects and other organisms has resulted in plant diseases heretofore unknown in the area. The health of the land, its crops and people is further compromised by a diminishing water supply brought on by years of drought and the serious overuse of Lake Chapala water for the metropolis of Guadalajara.

Farming and the misuse of dangerous chemicals, has been blamed for almost half of the contamination in Lake Chapala, This problem area extents from the base of the Lerma river, through 5 states and into the Lake Chapala.

In August of 1996 Hill and Pruden started planning an independent, self sustaining horticultural project that would be accessible to a wider rural and urban population, one that would prepare youths, families and farmers from many Mexican communities (regardless of their religious affiliation or locality), with training in organic farming, food production, and water and environmental conservation. They found support from a small body of equally concerned lakeside citizens and, on April 24, 1997, they incorporated a six-member board of directors as the Asociación Comunitaria de Autosuficiencia, A.C.

ACA was incorporated under Mexican law as a nonprofit organization on April 22, 1997