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Milpa Food Growing

Coriolanus · 2011-03-23 00:11:43

So, I've been reading a bit of things in a tangential way about milpa farming in the central/southern americas. I'm wondering if there's anyway to make a system like that work with out climate. Obviouisly different crops, but they key would be identifying ones that are complementary in terms of nutrition, rescource usage…

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23-03-2011 1:11am

#1

Coriolanus

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So, I've been reading a bit of things in a tangential way about milpa farming in the central/southern americas.

I'm wondering if there's anyway to make a system like that work with out climate. Obviouisly different crops, but they key would be identifying ones that are complementary in terms of nutrition, rescource usage etc.

"A milpa is a field, usually but not always recently cleared, in which farmers plant a dozen crops at once including maize, avocados, multiple varieties of squash and bean, melon, tomatoes, chilis, sweet potato, jícama, amaranth, and mucana.... Milpa crops are nutritionally and environmentally complementary. Maize lacks the amino acids lysine and tryptophan, which the body needs to make proteins and niacin;.... Beans have both lysine and tryptophan.... Squashes, for their part, provide an array of vitamins; avocados, fats. The milpa, in the estimation of H. Garrison Wilkes, a maize researcher at the University of Massachusetts in Boston, "is one of the most successful human inventions ever created."

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