When NASA’s Aqua satellite passed over the region at midday on March 3, 2009, it captured the image to the right, which shows the distinctive patches of green made possible by the irrigation efforts of some revolutionary figures around a century ago.

The Pacífico Norte irrigation region is now Mexico’s principal agricultural area, containing over 70 percent of all irrigated land in the country.

Its mainly frost-free, temperate and sunny climate during the winter months allows farmers to grow much of the green vegetables, tomatoes and melons that wind up on produce shelves across the United States and Canada from November until spring.

The most productive part of the region is known as the Valle del Fuerte, of which the Sinaloa city of Los Mochis is the economic capital.

The city was founded in 1893 by a group of utopian socialist Americans, who built the first irrigation ditches in the valley and later began exporting the first of many crops to come out of its verdant fields.

Visible in the close-up portion of the image are crosshatch patterns that define the various crops grown in the Yaqui Valley around Ciudad Obregon. That city was named after Alvaro Obregon, who was president of Mexico after the country’s revolution, and later initiated an “agricultural revolution" in the Yaqui Valley.

He introduced modern agricultural techniques that drew the attention of renowned U.S. agronomist Norman Borlaug, the architect of the Green Revolution. Borlaug conducted studies in the valley and developed strains of wheat that were not only resistant to disease, but also higher in yield than any others grown before.

Those efforts in genetics later earned Borlaug the Nobel Prize.

Satellite image: NASA's MODIS Rapid Response System