Canned Cacti.

A Mexican town pins its future prosperity on nopal, ancestral food once derided as cattle feed.

MARCOS ROSAS ABAD HAS A SIMPLE QUESTION: WHY, IN THE age of the North American Free Trade Agreement, should small farmers like him limit themselves to Mexico's modest domestic market? After all, exports lead to prosperity.

Rosas Abad thinks he might have the right crop: the nopal, an edible cactus that traces its roots back to pre-Columbian times and to Milpa Alta, this quaint district of rural hamlets that is actually part of Mexico City.

The fleshy cactus leaves were once derided as cattle feed. But today, it's popular all over Mexico. Now some would-be exporters claim it's catching on with Mexican-food aficionados in the United States and health food junkies in North America and Europe--and are doing everything they can to supply them.

"We need new markets," says Rosas Abad. "We need to find a way to improve our production and export the nopal, because people would like it if they tried it."

Prickly export. Help is on the way. Budding entrepreneurs are trying to add the nopal to the long list of Mexican folk products such as tequila, tortillas and salsa that have found favor abroad. Their goal is to transform the cactus leaf industry from an agricultural backwater into another Mexican export success story.

"There's definitely a market abroad for the nopal, I can see it," says Ismael Rivera Crux, director of Nopal del Carmen, a small company in Milpa Alta that exports a portion of its canned cactus leaves to Germany, Holland, Belgium and Spain. "We need to work a little harder and we need some more financing."

Its name means "high cornfield" in Mexican Spanish, but Milpa Alta has become the nopal capital of the world, producing 280,000 metric tons last year worth some US$63 million, according to the Agriculture Ministry. The town of 90,000--really a collection of 12 separate villages--is a borough of Mexico City and just an hour from downtown.

But you'd never guess how close the town lies to the world's most populous city. Earthen hills separate Milpa Alta from the rest of the capital, keeping the great metropolis out of sight and out of mind. A single winding road snakes through rolling countryside and nopal fields, connecting villages where cobblestone streets and colonial churches have retained their timeless rural tranquility.

Cactus leaves are the town's main business year round, accounting for 60% of the local economy. And no place in Mexico would benefit as much from their exports as Milpa Alta.

There are a few signs the nopal is catching on beyond Mexico's borders. Farmers now grow nopales as far away as Japan and Italy. Health food companies in the United States and Canada are packaging nopal-based capsules as an aid in easing indigestion, controlling body weight and even managing high cholesterol and diabetes. The cactus leaves are also gaining acceptance thanks to the increasing popularity of Mexican food worldwide.

"Nopales have been on my menu since we opened 14 years ago, and they've been very well received," says David Suro, a Guadalajara native who owns a restaurant in Philadelphia called Tequilas. Indeed, one of the house favorites is Filete Grito, a slab of beef tenderloin on a nopal leaf spiked with serrano chiles. "Some people are not very adventurous," Suro says. "But when they try nopal, I would say 90% of them like it,"

Still, boosting the homely nopal's popularity outside Mexico a hard sell. Cacti may be picturesque along the highway, but they don't exactly have the natural appeal of tequila reposado or Corona beer. The leaves get slimy after being cooked, sliced and incorporated into classic dishes like tacos de nopales or nopales conjitomate (cactus leaf with red tomatoes). And the wild vegetable flavor leaves even Mexicans split into opposing camps of supporters and detractors.

Green saliva. Then there's nopal juice, often available in the breakfast spreads at trendy restaurants and Mexican hotels. Some laud the stuff as a healthy potable that's easy on the stomach and not too sweet. Others describe it as green saliva.

But in Milpa Alta, the natural goodness--and commercial promise--of the nopal is an article of faith. Townspeople have been growing the cactus since before the Spanish conquest The plants are a staff of life rivaled only by corn.

"Where there are nopal plants, there are people," says Esteban Olvera Gomez, a physician and Milpa Alta native who harvests a nopal field in his spare time.

Olvera Gomez, who is now a top political official in Milpa Alta, remembers when the nopal began its commercial conquest of Mexicans. People in Milpa Alta and pockets of central Mexico have eaten cactus leaves for centuries, but many others didn't catch on until the 1970s.

Now the plant is common in supermarkets nationwide. Farmers from states like Morelos, Hidalgo, Aguascalientes and San Luis Potosi have made pilgrimages to Milpa Alta and taken home seed plants that provided the basis for their own fields. Milpa Alta is still the national leader in nopal production, but it has plenty of competition.

"When I was in medical school, I had friends from northern Mexico City who thought nopal leaves were just cattle feed," Olvera Gomez says. "They changed their minds after trying it."

Farmers in Milpa Alta switched to nopal production en masse in the 1960s as traditional subsistence farming gave way to the search for a cash crop.

But cactus farming provides only a modest living to farmers like 67-year-old Rosas Abad. Making the business more profitable through exports could be crucial to fighting off the chief threat to Milpa Alta's future. Mexico City is just a few miles away over the nearby hills, and urban sprawl might one day destroy the rural, small-town life that still predominates here.

"The nopal is the economic sustenance of our community," Olvera Gomez says. "The more we promote nopal production, the better our chances of preventing the city from taking over Milpa Alta."