Traditional andean cultivation systems and implications for sustainable land use

High Andean cultures constitute one of the best examples of long-term, large scale experimentation in sustainable land use. The Central Andes have a temperate to cool climate and tubers are the crops grown at the highest altitudes, e.g. potato (possibly the highest altitude crop in the world), ulluco, oca and mashua. We compare the effect of a range of cultural elements in different regions on criteria of sustainability. Yields are lower than maximum yields obtained with intensive agriculture as there is a trade-off between productivity, risk management, external subsidies and degradation. Key elements of Andean experimentation are: distributed research and development for hundreds to thousands of years, during which climates and cultures have changed dramatically; high native biodiversity; a culture of careful observation, selection, breeding, conservation and exchange of genetic varieties; and a knowledge intensive management strategy taking advantage of biodiversity and three-dimensional landscape and cultural heterogeneity, maintaining a high temporal and spatial gamma diversity (dynamic turnover of crop diversity). These elements have led to the development of land use management strategies resilient to environmental variability. We can learn from the Andean management philosophy and policy. However, this knowledge is rapidly deteriorating with the synergistic effects of population and consumption growth, poverty and free-market economies as they steamroll further and further into remote Andean valleys.