Clark Erickson on Sustainable Agriculture

Indigenous knowledge systems of landscape management need to be studied and evaluated before they disappear forever. In cases where the prehistoric infrastructure has been completely abandoned, investigations using archaeology and agricultural experiments may be able to recover sufficient information on how these systems function to adequately evaluate them and potentially put them back into use. Both contemporary and prehistoric systems may hold the clue to future rural development in regions such as the Andes where farming has many limitations. In many cases, the current social, political, and economic context, not the indigenous technology, is the cause of low production and poverty.

Clark L. Erickson, Prehistoric landscape management in the Andean highlands: Raised field agriculture and its environmental impact. Population and Environment 13(4):299. 1992