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El Retorno a la Tierra/Going Back To the Land is a 2018 landscape-planning proposal by Nicole Rivera-Ramos for community-based food production in Las Marías, Puerto Rico—not a film or a completed construction project. Recognized with an Award of Excellence in Analysis & Planning in the American Society of Landscape Architects’ Student Awards, it combines forest farming and forest gardening with a proposed community center and farmers market. Its central idea is to connect the landscape’s food-producing potential with community life, while leaving site access, landownership, and implementation as questions to resolve.
What is El Retorno a la Tierra?
It is a student landscape architecture proposal that uses Las Marías as a case study for food self-sufficiency and community-based agroecology. Nicole Rivera-Ramos’s project received an Award of Excellence in Analysis & Planning in the 2018 ASLA Student Awards. The award page presents the work as a proposal and says additional study was needed to identify available community sites and address landownership; it does not establish that the plan was built or adopted.
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1Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitches2Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errors3Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteThe name, translated as “Going Back To the Land,” expresses the project’s aim of reconnecting residents with local food production. Rivera-Ramos’s project statement says, “Producing our own food gives us power and freedom.” That is the author’s rationale, not a reported measurement of the proposal’s effects.
The ASLA jury called the work “Boldly attacks a timely issue of broad relevance.” The project’s relevance comes from treating food production not only as a matter of crops, but as a question of land, community participation, and resilience. In that sense, the proposal is both a landscape concept and a social framework: it asks how places for growing, gathering, and selling food might operate together.
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Where would the proposal work?
The plan uses the barrio as a basic planning unit and focuses on Maravilla Este and Las Marías Pueblo, two barrios in the municipality of Las Marías. The project statement gives historical 2018 context figures of 9,881 residents for Las Marías, 748 for Maravilla Este, and 262 for Las Marías Pueblo. These are figures reported on the award page for the project; they should not be read as current population counts.
Using barrios as planning units gives the proposal a community scale. The design is framed around places where residents might grow, share, and market food, rather than as a single island-wide blueprint. That scale also lets local circumstances shape the result. A forest edge in one barrio, a pasture in another, and a grassland elsewhere may present different opportunities, even though all are discussed as possible settings in the proposal.
Rivera-Ramos describes the model as one that could be adapted to other communities. Adaptability, however, does not mean that the same sites or design would fit elsewhere. The proposal itself leaves local site availability and landownership unresolved, so any transfer would begin with a new assessment of who controls land, which community spaces are available, and how ecological conditions are changing.
What landscape strategies does it propose?
The proposal centers on forest farming and forest gardening, with opportunities to integrate food crops into reforestation at forest edges, pastures, and grasslands. It also proposes a community center and a farmers market. These elements address different parts of the project’s goal: growing food, connecting people to the landscape, and supporting community engagement and agricultural marketing.
| Proposal element | Setting or role | Intended contribution |
|---|---|---|
| Forest farming and forest gardening | Food crops integrated with reforestation opportunities along forest edges, in pastures, and in grasslands | Local food production connected to landscape renewal |
| Community center | A proposed community-focused gathering element | Community engagement and social support for the wider effort |
| Farmers market | A proposed agricultural marketing element | A place to support the marketing of locally produced agriculture |
The three components are complementary rather than interchangeable. Growing areas address production; a community center could support participation and shared activity; and a market could connect agricultural output with exchange. The award description does not say that any one element would operate independently or that a market would guarantee sales. It presents them as parts of a broader community-based approach.
The award page names these strategies but does not provide a construction package, crop schedule, site-plan dimensions, budget, or list of specific species. It would therefore be inaccurate to treat the project as a ready-to-build design or to infer particular materials, facilities, or planting prescriptions from the award description alone.
How could forest farming support the project’s goals?
In the proposal, forest farming and forest gardening are landscape strategies for combining food crops with reforestation opportunities. Their significance is the connection between production and ecological change: rather than describing food growing and forest recovery as separate aims, the project looks for places where they might be integrated.
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The project statement also notes that post-hurricane forests were in ecological succession and that strategies needed to remain flexible as conditions changed. That means the proposal’s approach is not presented as a fixed planting formula. Forest edges, pastures, and grasslands are opportunities to assess, not proof that any particular site is suitable. The award page does not identify exact parcels, determine land tenure, or specify what crops would thrive in each setting.
A useful comparison is therefore by landscape setting, not by a ranked list of preferred sites. At a forest edge, planners would be considering the relationship between emerging forest cover and food-growing space. In a pasture, the question would be how an open, previously managed area might relate to reforestation and community production. In grassland, the opportunity would likewise require a site-specific look at changing ecological conditions. The source does not select one setting over another.
Forest farming and forest gardening should not be confused here with a fully specified agricultural system. The source identifies them as proposed strategies, but does not document their detailed design, management, yields, or long-term ecological effects in Las Marías. The useful takeaway is the planning principle: consider food production alongside reforestation, then adapt decisions to the actual site and community.
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Why does the project emphasize food self-sufficiency?
The proposal’s rationale is that community-based production could help residents produce food locally and strengthen self-sufficiency and resilience. It contrasts this diversified, ecological subsistence approach with Puerto Rico’s historical export-oriented agriculture and monoculture. This is the project’s framing and argument, not an independent assessment of the island’s current agricultural system.
To explain the context, the 2018 project statement says that 85% of food consumed in Puerto Rico was imported. The award page does not identify the underlying dataset or establish that the figure remains current, so it should be treated as a historical statistic cited by the project, not as today’s verified import rate.
The project statement also reports that the Puerto Rico Department of Agriculture estimated that 80% of crop value was lost following Hurricane Maria in 2017. This is an estimate attributed to that department by the project statement and reproduced on the ASLA award page; the source does not establish a present-day loss figure or provide an independent verification here. The proposal uses the reported loss to underscore the vulnerability of food production and the case for locally grounded resilience.
Read together, the two figures explain the proposal’s urgency: a heavy reliance on imported food and a major hurricane-related agricultural loss are presented as reasons to explore production rooted in local communities. Neither statistic demonstrates that the proposed design would reduce imports or prevent future losses. Evidence of impact would require implementation and subsequent evaluation, neither of which is reported on the award page.
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How do the social elements fit the agricultural ones?
The community center and farmers market keep the proposal from being only a planting scheme. A community center is identified as a gathering and engagement element, while the farmers market is identified as an agricultural marketing element. Together, they suggest places where residents could organize around production and where locally produced agriculture could meet buyers.
The source does not specify the center’s rooms, services, governance, opening hours, or construction materials. It also does not state how often the market would operate, what vendors would sell, or how revenue would be managed. Those omissions are important: the proposal establishes the roles these elements could play, but not an operating manual.
This social dimension also explains why the barrio is central. Food self-sufficiency is framed as something residents do with one another, not simply as a technical intervention placed on land. Community engagement, access to sites, and agricultural marketing would all have to be worked out locally if the concept moved beyond the award stage.
Was the plan built, and are its proposed sites available?
The ASLA award page does not say that the proposal was implemented, and it does not answer whether particular sites are available today. It explicitly identifies the need for additional study to find available community sites and address landownership. The project should therefore be described as an award-winning proposal, not as a completed community facility, operating market, or established food program.
That distinction matters in any construction or landscape-planning discussion. A concept can identify an opportunity without demonstrating that land can be accessed, that an owner will approve the use, or that a design is ready for construction. For this proposal, the award page does not document site control, permits, engineering, funding, construction, or ongoing stewardship. Those subjects remain outside what the source establishes.
If the concept were taken forward, several questions would have to be answered before a site could be selected: Which community properties are actually available? Who owns or manages each parcel? How would residents participate in decisions? How would changing post-hurricane forests affect the location and timing of food-growing activity? What form of community center and market would fit local needs? These are implementation questions prompted by the proposal’s stated constraints, not documented steps that Rivera-Ramos completed.
Likewise, the proposal’s suggestion that its model could be adapted elsewhere is not a claim that a single design can simply be copied. The need to identify suitable sites and deal with ownership points to local conditions as prerequisites. The source’s concise observation that “Landownership is a big question” captures a central implementation constraint without resolving it.
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What does the proposal contribute to landscape planning?
Its contribution is a community-scale planning framework that brings together land-based food strategies and social infrastructure. Forest farming and forest gardening address the relationship between food crops and reforestation opportunities; the community center and farmers market address gathering, engagement, and agricultural marketing. The proposal treats those components as connected parts of an approach to food self-sufficiency.
It also makes flexibility part of the planning problem. The project statement describes post-hurricane forests in ecological succession and calls for strategies responsive to changing conditions. As a result, the proposal is better understood as a set of directions for further site-specific planning than as a finalized design. Its value lies in the questions it joins together: where food can be grown, how forest recovery can be considered, how residents can participate, and how agricultural products can reach a local market.
For readers comparing this proposal with a conventional farm plan, the difference is scope. The award description is not a crop-production study with projected yields, nor is it a construction document for a community building. It is a landscape-planning concept that links ecological settings and civic functions. That distinction helps explain both its broad relevance and its unresolved practical questions.
For readers interested in the original work, the ASLA 2018 Student Awards page for El Retorno a la Tierra/Going Back To the Land identifies Rivera-Ramos, the award, the case-study areas, and the project statement. It is the primary source for the proposal and its historical claims, but it does not report current conditions or implementation status.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Frequently Asked Questions
Who designed El Retorno a la Tierra?
Landscape architecture student Nicole Rivera-Ramos authored the proposal. The ASLA recognized it in its 2018 Student Awards, in the Analysis & Planning category.
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The title is rendered in English as “Going Back To the Land.” In the project’s framing, it refers to bringing people back into relationship with land and local food production, rather than to a documented construction or agricultural program.
Did the ASLA award mean the project was approved for construction?
No. The award recognized the student proposal; the award page does not state that it received construction approval, funding, or implementation. It also notes outstanding needs concerning community sites and landownership.
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What are forest farming and forest gardening doing in this proposal?
They are proposed ways to integrate food crops with reforestation opportunities at forest edges, pastures, and grasslands. The source does not provide a crop list, yield forecast, or detailed management plan.
Why are Maravilla Este and Las Marías Pueblo important?
They are the two barrios selected as study areas within Las Marías. The barrio is used as the basic planning unit, giving the concept a community scale rather than an island-wide one.
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What population figures are associated with the case study?
The project statement reports 9,881 residents for Las Marías, 748 for Maravilla Este, and 262 for Las Marías Pueblo as historical 2018 context. They are not presented as current counts.
Did Hurricane Maria prove that this proposal works?
No. The project statement uses a reported estimate that 80% of crop value was lost after Hurricane Maria in 2017 to explain the proposal’s rationale. It does not report implementation or measured results from Rivera-Ramos’s design.
Are the proposed sites available today?
The award page does not say. It identifies site availability and landownership as issues requiring additional study, so current access or ownership cannot be inferred from the award.
Can this proposal be used as a template for another community?
Rivera-Ramos describes it as a model that could be adapted to other communities, but the source does not supply a universal design or prove that the same strategies suit every location. Its own emphasis on changing ecological conditions and unresolved site access makes local assessment essential.
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The Bottom Line
Bottom line: El Retorno a la Tierra is an ASLA-recognized 2018 proposal for linking community food production, reforestation opportunities, a community center, and a farmers market in Las Marías. It offers a flexible planning idea, not proof of construction or current operation; site availability, landownership, and implementation remain unresolved.
