Growing Food. Growing Futures.
Engineering Food Security for Mayan Communities
The Maya Heritage Center and the University of Georgia are partnering to bring sustainable vertical farming and automatic irrigation to the Yucatán Peninsula—combining Indigenous knowledge with modern engineering to fight food insecurity, expand technical education, and build climate-resilient futures.
Vertical Farming & Automatic Irrigation Initiative
Maya Heritage Center | Virtual Mesoamerican Polytechnic Institute | University of Georgia
Through a senior engineering capstone partnership, students and faculty at the University of Georgia designed a culturally grounded, affordable, and scalable vertical farming system that modernizes the ancient Mayan ka’anche raised-bed technique with automatic drip irrigation and drainage.
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This system is more than a farm—it is a living classroom and a food security solution, producing fresh vegetables while teaching sustainable agriculture, irrigation engineering, and environmental stewardship to Mayan youth.
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