Wiktionary
n. 1 (cx agriculture uncountable English) A cyclical crop-growing system used throughout Mesoamerica. 2 (cx agriculture countable English) A small field, especially in Mexico or Central America, that is cleared from the jungle, cropped for a few seasons, and then abandoned for a fresh clearing.
Wikipedia
right|thumb|A typical modern Central American Milpa. The corn stalks have been bent and left to dry with cobs still on, for other crops, such as beans, to be planted. (Note: the banana plants in the background are not native, but are now a common part of modern Central American agriculture)
Milpa is a crop-growing system used throughout Mesoamerica. It has been most extensively described in the Yucatán peninsula area of Mexico. The word milpa is derived from the Nahuatl word phrase mil-pa, which translates into "maize field." Though different interpretations are given to it, it usually refers to a cropping field. Based on the ancient agricultural methods of Maya peoples and other Mesoamerican people, milpa agriculture produces maize, beans, and squash. The milpa cycle calls for 2 years of cultivation and eight years of letting the area lie fallow. Agronomists point out that the system is designed to create relatively large yields of food crops without the use of artificial pesticides or fertilizers, and they point out that while it is self-sustaining at current levels of consumption, there is a danger that at more intensive levels of cultivation the milpa system can become unsustainable.
The word is also used for a small field, especially in Mexico or Central America, that is cleared from the jungle, cropped for a few seasons, and then abandoned for a fresh clearing. In the states of Jalisco, Michoacán, and other areas of central Mexico, the term milpa simply means a single corn plant (milpas for plural). In El Salvador and Guatemala, it refers specifically to the corn crop or corn field as a whole.
Charles C. Mann described milpa agriculture as follows, in 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus:
"A milpa is a field, usually but not always recently cleared, in which farmers plant a dozen crops at once including maize, avocados, multiple varieties of squash and bean, melon, tomatoes, chilis, sweet potato, jícama, amaranth, and mucuna.... Milpa crops are nutritionally and environmentally complementary. Maize lacks the amino acids lysine and tryptophan, which the body needs to make proteins and niacin;.... Beans have both lysine and tryptophan.... Squashes, for their part, provide an array of vitamins; avocados, fats. The milpa, in the estimation of H. Garrison Wilkes, a maize researcher at the University of Massachusetts in Boston, "is one of the most successful human inventions ever created.""
The concept of milpa is a sociocultural construct rather than simply a system of agriculture. It involves complex interactions and relationships between farmers, as well as distinct personal relationships with both the crops and land. For example, it has been noted that "the making of milpa is the central, most sacred act, one which binds together the family, the community, the universe...[it] forms the core institution of Indian society in Mesoamerica and its religious and social importance often appear to exceed its nutritional and economic importance."
Milpitas, California derives its name from the Nahuatl term "milpa" followed by the Spanish feminine diminutive plural suffix "-itas".
Usage examples of "milpa".
Where had once been milpa patches was only a thick growth of uamiz bushes ten to twenty feet high.
It seemed silly that the natives should exist in huts, raising only a milpa, or small patch of corn cleared in the native jungle, and giving that no more cultivation than it required, and rarely doing anything else in the line of work except gather a few thick maguey leaves to repair a hut after wind blew the thatching away.
Schellhas supposes, to indicate the field or milpa in which the corn is growing, but the grain from which the plant is springing.
Most such milpas or small truck fields in these parts were tilled by Mexican hoe farmers.
For even as he passed some corn milpas flattened by the recent storm, he spied others where, from some natural whim, the green young cornstalks still stood proud in the morning sun.
Longarm didn't see any serious stock, Or serious stockmen, on the modest Mexican milpas this close to Escondrijo.
They'd passed the last corn milpas north of town, and the tree-shaded wagon trace was surrounded by spartina reeds to seaward and thickets of gumbo-limbo saplings on the higher ground to their left.
He was sure he had more answers than he really did as he tore out to the west with his saddle gun cocked across his knees, eyes peeled for ambush from the cactus hedges around the small milpas he tore by.
Farmers out hunting and others working in their milpas saw them and reported them to me.