Traditional wisdom and modern stupidity
The people of the Andes cultivated over 1000 varieties of potatoes, often planting up to 200 varieties at a single site, and over 150 varieties of maize. The Irish potato famine could not possibly have occurred in the Andes.
Modern idiots plant a single variety of corn engineered by Monsanto over thousands of acres.
To be fair though, that one variant of corn engineered by Monsanto can probably kill pests by itself, has high tolerance to pesticides that would kill almost every other corn variety, has less nutrional needs than normal corn, can be packed tighter than any past varieties, and is designed to appeal to the largest possible demographic in terms of taste. The people of Andes had to cultivate so man varieties because they grew crops at different altitudes and biomes so they had to be able to grow a diverse amount of crops in order to live in a diverse amount of environments.
ReplyDeleteThey also planted their crops in lots of small plots with a whole lot of walking between. That way, if something happened to one plot, they would still have the other plot. Inefficient but less fragile.
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