I keep thinking about a recent article in Nature by Talhelm and Dong that appears to confirm the theory that the staple crops (in this case wheat versus rice) can influence collectivistic cultural tendencies.
In particular, it makes me wonder how the #milpa impacted Indigenous North American cultures. A milpa is a #Native agroecological system largely centered around growing corn, beans and squash in the same field. It is intense, highly productive and also provides a complete and healthy diet in a very small amount of land.
I suspect that milpas lead to even more individualistic tendencies, which could explain the large linguistic and cultural diversity of North America and how it led to dense urban societies so quickly.
#Mayan#milpa 'Forest Gardens' had a special role in navigating climate shifts during the Maya Collapse – two centuries of political disintegration and urban depopulation between A.D. 800 to 1000.
"Traditional milpa agriculture requires a lot of forested land, since farmers need to relocate their fields every couple of years. But that need for forest is at odds with hotel companies, industrial cattle ranches and green energy developers who want cheap land and see Maya milpa forest management practices as inefficient. No-burn milpa eases this conflict by locking maize agriculture into one small space indefinitely, instead of spreading it out through the forest over generations. But it also changes tradition.
"Maya milpa farmers are now fighting to practice their ancient agricultural techniques, not because they’ve forgotten or lost those techniques, but because neocolonial land privatization policies actively undermine farmers’ ability to manage woodlands as their ancestors did."