"WARU WARU" - The ancient andean technology against climate change.

Id love to to put this idea to practice in my own garden! this looks amazing, also in keeping all wet! brilliant! also: i love Peruvian history, this is just a brilliant post! Thank you OP for posting! Keep coming this good stuff!

Thanks for the information... we really need to get back or include these traditional growing methods in today's world. Pumping salt based ferts into our soil is destroying the microherd (life in soil). These soils are being ruined and if we continue to do this the ground will become unusable without synthetic nutrients.

We should be feeding the soil and in turn it feeds the plants, not using the soil as something to hold the chemical nutrients until the plants takes them up.

It won't be long before synthetic ferts are too expensive which pushes up the price of food and we HAVE to revert back to more traditional methods in order to "control" the rising cost of food. Hopefully we can bring the life back to the soil and keep fed.

They like to try and convince you that the old methods can't keep up with the new methods of growing but in reality rather than a huge field of say potatoes imagine something more like hundreds of veg gardens (allotments) on that same field and imagine the people it could feed. It would be way more productive than just doing one crop.

reply to post by TiM3LoRd

That's right...

It would be great to add fish to that "pond" but because the water is not "moving" you will need an aerate the water.

I'm sure you could come up with some kind of system though, maybe solar power for a air stone or use a pump to move the water and then "drop" it into the water from a high which will add oxygen!

Sounds a good idea to use this system but include fish as well. A system were the roots grow down (left/right) into the pond and filter (use) the fish poo and use it up as a nutrient.

I guess all we really are saying though is plants grown alongside a fish pond (clay bottom) where the roots have access to the water....

I long for the day a wormary can feed fish and fish feed plants and a whole closed cycle works without chemical input.

Anyway, all very interesting, thanks for the thread.

Farmers don't care about that. That would take up too much land that could be used for the planting more crops. If they were to endure a flood or disaster of any sort they have insurance that covers their asses.

reply to post by HawkeyeNation


Seems to be just your opinion, or do you have any source that supports what you said?

reply to post by Trueman


Hi trueman,
Thanks again for your insights into andean cultures.
The idea of the waru waru is a novel approach the the rigours of high altitude agriculture, its amazing they could get anything to grow there at all.
In response to some of the other comments, this technique is an interesting regional adaptation to the local climate, but it is not an agricultural " magic elixer", and if used in some environments its more a " snake oil" solution to agricultural problems.
One thing that wasn't brought up by anyone , is salinization of the soils.
Any time you have intensive irrigation, and evaporation you will have salt build up in the soils, if the salt heavy runoff isn't drained away salts will build up and render the soils useless, even with drains the soils will eventually become salty.

Look at mesopotamian history of agricultural and salinization of soils was a huge problem, that they settled, sort of, with waste water drainage via canals into the tigris and euphrates rivers, but that influx of super salty water spoiled the rivers downstrean and they led to serious conflict with city states down stream.
We ran into that problem here in the central valley of cali, after only 2 generations of agricultural use. Salty drain water devastated vast areas of wetlands, causing deformities in water fowl, that have taken 30 years to correct.

Ah so thats were minecraft got its farming planning from

Originally posted by Trueman
reply to post by HawkeyeNation

 

Seems to be just your opinion, or do you have any source that supports what you said?

For sure I can't speak for every farmer but I live here in IA (if you couldn't tell). I am not a farmer but grew with my dad being one and also a lot of my friends. Bottom line is more land for more crops = more money. The past season the farmers (well my friends) were ok in the fact that a lot of the crops were drought damaged and it's because insurance took care of them. I could be wrong but this is just based off of what I've experienced.