The Incas used every possible square foot of arable land to produce food, and developed techniques of transforming unusable land through terracing, raised platforms, dredging, and irrigation. Literally millions of hours of labor were spent clearing land, erecting stone walls, and filling the terraces with topsoil. Present-day agronomists wondered if all that work produced good results.
In 1983, Dr. Clark Erickson of the University of Pennsylvania headed up a team of agronomists and archaeologists in an experiment to duplicate Inca agricultural methods. They
Replicated Inca terrace beds and grew crops traditional to Inca farming: potatoes and quinoa. The results astounded the scientists. Normal potato crops for similar acreage would yield about eight tons of potatoes per acre. The 1984 potato crop in the Inca beds produced more than 16 tons per acre, and the following year produced 30 tons per acre.
Little wonder that many Inca-built agricultural terraces are still in use today. Space-saving and effective, Andes farmers continue to get high crop yields from an agricultural plan devised in the 1400s.
Rainfall from the western desert regions, leaving a desert so dry that even cactus cannot survive and corpses dehydrate into natural mummies.
Small rivers such as the Tambo, Ica, and Santa, cut fertile valleys through the dry western region. The rivers served as the lifeblood for cultures settling in the region, where by 3,000 B. C.E. people had cleared forest to expand cropland. Extensive farming began long before the Incas ruled the region.
World History
