In the maze-like canals of Xochimilco, on the southern edge of Mexico City, farmer Lucía Ortíz trudges through fields of brilliant orange cempasúchil — the marigold that will soon blanket altars and cemeteries across Mexico for the Day of the Dead.

For Ortíz, who has cultivated the flower for decades using traditional chinampa farming, the season has become a struggle for survival.

Heavy rains, floods, and droughts have ravaged crops for consecutive years, the latest blows from a changing climate that farmers say has upended their livelihoods.

She estimates losing around 30% of her harvest this year, while many others have faced even greater losses.

The cempasúchil holds deep spiritual and cultural meaning, believed to guide the souls of the departed back to the living each November.

It’s also a vital economic engine: commerce groups estimate that flower sales will bring in nearly $2.7 million for farmers in 2025.

But those earnings are increasingly uncertain.

Rising costs for fertilizer and pesticides, coupled with thinning profit margins, have forced families like Ortíz’s to cut back on daily essentials.

According to biologist Clara Soto Cortés, who leads a government seed bank in Mexico City, the decline took root years ago when many farmers abandoned native marigold varieties in favor of shorter, hybrid plants from the United States — easier to market but far less resilient to extreme weather.

Scientists at the facility are now working to preserve native seeds with greater genetic diversity, hoping these hardier strains can help farmers rebuild crops and protect Mexico’s iconic bloom from the growing impacts of climate change.

Through these efforts, they hope Mexico’s traditional “flower of the dead” — and the centuries-old culture surrounding it — can withstand the pressures of a rapidly changing climate.