The Mennonites, whose lives revolve around farming, have transformed the arid landscape of Chihuahua into productive fields of corn, beans, oats and wheat, turning the border state into one of Mexico's top milk producers.
The conservative Christian church, whose members arrived in Mexico from Canada in 1922 after a long journey through Russia, the Netherlands and Germany, has drilled deep wells in the arid land, using the water to produce corn harvests exceeding 300,000 tons.
The Mennonites, who are the largest producers of oats in Mexico and also have extensive fields planted with beans, have now started to produce apples in large quantities.
The community's star product, a food with which people all over Mexico are familiar, is Mennonite, or "Chihuahua," cheese, of which they produce 70,000 kilos (nearly 155,000 pounds) a day, selling this delicacy across the republic.
Cheese production expanded rapidly to take advantage of the community's vast milk production, which now hovers around 400,000 liters (105,675 gallons) per day, Mennonite community member Abram Siemens said.
The Mennonites, moreover, have constructed enormous facilities, known as "macro cheese plants," where they have improved the production of dairy products by developing special genetic strains of cattle, incorporating breeds from Canada, the United States and New Zealand.
The businesses run by the Mennonites employ about 20,000 people in Chihuahua, with the majority of them working in agriculture and dairy production, Lisa Wolf, who runs the Mennonite Cultural Center and Museum in Ciudad Cuauhtemoc, told Efe.
The community has started building a strong metal-working industry, as well as agricultural machinery and furniture businesses, Wolf said.
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