Mexican Lucio Usobiaga Wins Global Prize for Preserving Ancestral Agriculture

Mexican Lucio Usobiaga won the Basque Culinary World Prize 2026 for his work with Arca Tierra, an initiative that links producers, restaurants and consumers to preserve the chinampas of Xochimilco, agricultural plots built in lake areas and surrounded by canals.

The project starts from the conviction that this agricultural system can only survive if the families who work it earn a dignified income.

Arca Tierra brings together nearly 50 producer families from Xochimilco, Puebla, Hidalgo and the State of Mexico, cultivates six hectares and supplies some 60 restaurants and 300 households through subscriptions.

The chinampas, a farming method developed in Mexico's ancient lake territories, face threats such as environmental deterioration, urban growth, the low profitability of farming and the lack of generational succession.

Usobiaga, trained in Philosophy, arrived in Xochimilco and learned from the chinamperos; he understood that protecting that knowledge also required creating economic opportunities for those who keep it alive.

His path in the project began in 2011, when he co-founded Yolcan to bring chinampera agriculture closer to new markets and to gastronomy. In 2020, that experience evolved into Arca Tierra, a network that combines agroecological production, distribution, training, restoration and research, and that connects producers with scientists, cooks and consumers.

The initiative also turned the chinampas into a learning space open to the public, and in 2025, nearly 16 thousand people took part in tours and experiences at the site to learn about the ecosystem and learn directly from the producer families.

However, in 2024, Usobiaga also opened Baldío, a restaurant developed in collaboration with British chef Douglas McMaster.

The Basque Culinary World Prize, awarded by the Basque Government and the Basque Culinary Center, will allocate 100 thousand euros to a project chosen by Usobiaga that expresses the potential of gastronomy to drive change.

In its 2026 edition, the prize broadened its scope to recognize not only chefs, but also professionals and projects linked to gastronomy that have a proven social impact.

The jury was chaired by chef Joan Roca and included, among others, Mexican cook Elena Reygadas, Brazilian Manu Buffara, Frenchman Michel Bras and Argentine Narda Lepes. In this edition it also gave a special mention to Gastronomia Periférica, a São Paulo initiative that trains people from peripheral communities to open up employment and autonomy opportunities for them, and created the BCWP Cooking Legacy recognition, granted to French cook Jacques Pépin.

"Gastronomy is, in essence, a return to the land," Usobiaga said upon receiving the recognition. For Arca Tierra, the prize represents support to keep building bridges between the countryside and the kitchen, with producer communities as the protagonists of the conservation of the chinampas.