https://reasonstobecheerful.world/growing-corn-hopi-dry-farming/
"When Michael Kotutwa Johnson goes out to the acreage behind his stone house to
harvest his corn, his fields look vastly different from the endless rows of
corn you see in much of rural North America. Bundled in groups of five or six,
his corn stalks shoot out of the sandy desert in bunches, resembling bushels
rather than tightly spaced rows. “We don’t do your typical 14-inch spaced
rows,” he says.
Instead, Kotutwa Johnson, an enrolled member of the Hopi tribe, practices the
Hopi tradition he learned from his grandfather on the Little Colorado River
Plateau near Kykotsmovi Village in northeastern Arizona, a 90-minute drive from
Flagstaff: “In spring, we plant eight to 10 corn kernels and beans per hole,
further apart, so the clusters all stand together against the elements and
preserve the soil moisture.” For instance, high winds often blow sand across
the barren plateau. “This year was a pretty hot and dry year, but still, some
of the crops I raised did pretty well,” he says with a satisfied smile. “It’s a
good year for squash, melons and beans. I’ll be able to propagate these.”
Dry farming has been a Hopi tradition for several millennia. Kotutwa Johnson
might build some protection for his crops with desert brush or cans to shield
them from the wind, but his plants thrive without any fertilizer, pesticides,
herbicides, mulch or irrigation. This is all the more impressive since his area
usually gets less than 10 inches of rain per year.
In the era of climate change, the practice of dry farming is met with growing
interest from scientists and researchers as farmers grapple with droughts and
unpredictable weather patterns. For instance, the Dry Farming Institute in
Oregon lists a dozen farms it partners with, growing anything from tomatoes to
zucchini. However, Oregon has wet winters, with an annual rainfall of over 30
inches, whereas on the plateau in Arizona, Johnson’s crops get less than a
third of that. Farmers in Mexico, the Middle East, Argentina, Southern Russia
and Ukraine all have experimented with dry farming, relying on natural
rainfall, though conditions and practices vary in each region."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
