Pre-Columbian
raised field agriculture is an extremely interesting topic that we have
discussed in this blog before, here, here and here. We
call raised fields “any prepared land involving the transfer and elevation of
soil above the natural surface of the earth in order to improve cultivating
conditions” (Denevan and Turner, 1974). Raised fields have received a lot
of attention in studies related to pre-Columbian demography. They have been
considered key in allowing dense populations of complex societies to inhabit seasonally
flooded regions of South America in pre-Columbian times. Beyond their academic
interest, raised field agriculture has also become popular among rural
development workers and aid agencies working with small farmers in South
America. For more than 30 years now, some archaeologists and NGOs have favoured
the “re-introduction” of this pre-Columbian agricultural technique among modern
day farmers. In their view, raised fields (which are considered analogous to
the Chinampa system in Mexico) represent a promising pro-poor agricultural
innovation which is more productive and sustainable than traditional agriculture
(which, in the neo tropics is, basically, slash and burn).
A few days
ago, Philippe C. Baveye published on-line a thorough debunk of such proposals (Baveye in press) . It is a comment to a paper by
Renard et al (Renard et al., 2012) where the authors advocate for the
adoption of raised fields agriculture among modern farmers. The main points that
Baveye puts forwards are: 1) There is no evidence that raised fields have
supported dense populations in the past; 2) the pre-Columbian Chinampa system
is unique. Therefore, it cannot be assumed that the productivity of the
South-American raised fields, which are very different from the Mexican
Chinampas, was comparable to that of the Chinampas; and 3) the purpose of
raised fields was limited to water management:
soil drainage and/or irrigation. We reach very similar conclusions in (Lombardo et al., 2011). It is important to highlight that
none of the projects designed to reintroduce raised field agriculture among
small farmers in Bolivia and Peru have ever worked (actually, I am not aware of
any successful rehabilitation anywhere in the Americas). Local farmers have no
idea or knowledge about this ancient practice: this kind of indigenous
knowledge was lost hundreds of years ago when the Spaniards got to America. Therefore,
besides the technical problems described above, another reason behind this
large scale failure is that raised field agriculture has been entirely “invented”
by archaeologists and NGOs: the latest example I know of raised field
rehabilitation project failures comes from an Oxfam project in the Beni - Bolivian
Lowlands. The picture below shows the current state of the raised fields built
by Oxfam in 2009, amid an important media coverage and support (for example, see
this BBC article).
In 2011
raised fields were also built in the northern Beni.You see the state of the fields during the summer 2012 (photo below).
Hopefully, Baveye’s
comment will contribute to make researchers more cautious before proposing the ‘reintroduction’
of raised field agriculture in rural communities.
References
Baveye, Philippe C. (2013). Comment on “Ecological engineers ahead of their time: The functioning of pre-Columbian raised-field agriculture and its potential contributions to sustainability today” by Dephine Renard et al Ecological EngineeringReferences
Denevan, W. M., and Turner, B. L., 1974, Forms, functions and associations of raised fields in the old world tropics: Journal of tropical geography, v. 39, p. 24-33.
Lombardo, U., Canal-Beeby, E., Fehr, S., & Veit, H. (2011). Raised fields in the Bolivian Amazonia: a prehistoric green revolution or a flood risk mitigation strategy? Journal of Archaeological Science, 38 (3), 502-512 DOI: 10.1016/j.jas.2010.09.022
Renard, D., Iriarte, J., Birk, J., Rostain, S., Glaser, B., & McKey, D. (2012). Ecological engineers ahead of their time: The functioning of pre-Columbian raised-field agriculture and its potential contributions to sustainability today Ecological Engineering, 45, 30-44 DOI: 10.1016/j.ecoleng.2011.03.007
