Everyday agroecologies in the Mixteca Alta, Mexico: gendered knowledge and practices in homegarden agroecosystem management

Despite extensive documentation of homegarden agroecosystems in tropical contexts, their persistence and socio-ecological functioning in semi-arid regions of Mexico remain largely unexplored. This study examines how agroecological principles manifest at the household scale in homegardens of the Mixteca Alta, southern Mexico. We argue that women’s situated knowledge and expertise constitute – rather than merely contribute to – the management and resilience of these small-scale agroecosystems under conditions of socio-environmental constraint. Bridging feminist political ecology and agroecology, we ask: what agroecological principles persist in Mixtec homegardens, and how are these shaped by women’s everyday expertise? Drawing on 10 months of participatory and ethnographic fieldwork across four communities in San Bartolo Soyaltepec, we document how the composition, structure, and functions of homegardens hinge on gendered knowledge systems operating through logics distinct from parcel and landscape-level agroecological research. Our findings reveal that homegardens function as agrobiodiversity repositories, sites of climate adaptation, spaces of women’s resource autonomy, and nodes of knowledge exchange. Women’s everyday agroecologies – including soil-building, composting, livestock integration, and cultivation of native varieties – enable these agroecosystems to persist amid socio-ecological degradation. By centering gendered knowledge as constitutive of agroecosystem functioning, this research reveals how women’s creativity constitutes adaptive responses to scarcity, strengthening agroecology’s capacity to address smallholder realities.