Can Hopi Corn Save Ethiopian Farms? Employing 1,400 Years of Pueblo Agronomic Knowledge Towards Global Sustainability

2016 Southwest Symposium Poster.
Traditional crops and farming practices are not only nutritionally, economically, and spiritually important to human communities—they are reservoirs of resilience encapsulating generations of traditional agronomic and environmental knowledge. Can that knowledge be used to improve global food security? Using data from the MAÍS project and a state-of-the-art maize growth model, we simulate the potential productivity of several non-irrigated Pueblo maize varieties across the southwestern United States during the last two millennia, and then forecast productivity over the next century using IPCC climate-change projections. We do the same using historic weather data and future climate projections in southwestern Ethiopia. Drought- and heat-resistant Pueblo maize varieties are likely to provide a more stable and sustainable subsistence base for Ethiopian farmers than commercial hybrids currently under cultivation. Perhaps more importantly, Pueblo farming practices—developed in the drought-prone and highly variable Southwest—may help inform adaptive shifts by subsistence farmers worldwide.