Recycled containers, household compost, livestock manure and carefully conserved native plants form part of the homegardens managed by Mixtec women in San Bartolo Soyaltepec, Oaxaca, Mexico. Based on ten months of participatory and ethnographic fieldwork, including interviews with 50 women farmers, this research examines how women’s knowledge and daily practices shape homegarden agroecosystems in a semi-arid region affected by water scarcity, poor soils, climate variability and out-migration. The study combines agroecology with feminist political ecology to analyse these practices through agroecological principles related to resource efficiency, resilience and social equity.

The findings show that homegardens function as repositories of agrobiodiversity and spaces for food production, climate adaptation, knowledge exchange and women’s resource autonomy. Women build soil through composting, household organic waste, forest humus and livestock integration; conserve native and locally adapted varieties; recycle water; and exchange plants and knowledge through family and community networks. Their practices also help maintain edible, medicinal and culturally important species under increasingly variable climatic conditions.

The research emphasizes that women’s knowledge is integral to the ecological functioning and persistence of these agroecosystems rather than an additional input to their management. It also highlights constraints, including women’s time burdens and declining water availability. By documenting these “everyday agroecologies”, the study shows how household-scale practices connect biodiversity conservation, soil health, resource recycling, food provisioning and intergenerational knowledge in a resource-constrained Indigenous farming context.