PRODUCE In Guatemala, Small Is Best

PRODUCE In Guatemala, Small Is Best

His family has farmed the same tiny plot of land in the Guatemalan highlands for generations, but Jacobo Mendez is the first to reap riches from a most unlikely source: "baby" zucchini. Far to the north, novelty-loving Americans are willing to pay seven times the price of the full-grown product for its freshly flowered miniature equivalent. Mendez doesn't care why -- he's just glad they do. "I have my own house now, and we all eat better," says Mendez, 34, a Cakchiquel Indian descended from the Mayans, who ruled the region a thousand years ago.

Long familiar to French chefs, baby...

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