Inca Agriculture

The inca agriculture technics were absolutely incredible, because they develop a level of agriculture understanding and agriculture technology that has no match in the world, they were capable to improve the quality of a vegetable, the flavor, the temperature resistance, they could test and improve the production level of a variety of vegetable and as amazing as it sounds, they were capable to produce hybrids of vegetables by grafting the plants.

The greatest achievement of the inca agriculture was to guarantee a sustainable and permanent food supply to all parts of the kingdom, this was accomplish by the use of three methods of agriculture and several types of inca farming technics, the incas process and dry the food before been store, the inca store rooms could keep enough food to feed the entire kingdom for at list seven years.

The most important inca agriculture method was the Andenes; The andenes are artificial terraces build on hills with an average of 30 to 40 degrees of inclination; The incas use the gravity to provide whit water all the andenes, so it was crucial to know from where the water will came from and the path that the water will follow; As incredible as it sounds, the inca technology had tools to decide, plan and execute this very complex engineering project.

Ones the path of the water was chosen, the andenes were order to be build; First the entire face of the hill was cover with flat stones, creating a water proof surface, then from this water proof wall, smaller long stones came out in order to anchor the structure of the terrace to it; The final shape of the andenes were a long, rectangular, big, empty pot, with several water entries and drain system at the bottom.

The andenes were fill at the bottom, with thin layers of sand and stones, to make ease the drain of the water; Then the incas transport fertile ground from other locations and use it to fill up the andenes right to the top; The inca agriculture use fertilizers, like for example the excrement of seabirds call guano and fish, the fertile ground and fertilizers were place in many layers to improve the quality of the ground.

The second agriculture method was the Waru Waru, this system was use in flat high terrains, were the construction of andenes was not possible, or where the water supply was coming from the rain; The system consist in the creation of water temperated micro climates, by the construction of deep water channels around the ground that will be use for the crops, the channels were fill with water from the rain and the same water was use to irrigate the crops when it was need it.

The third and final inca agriculture method was the Quchakuna, word that means lagoon; This method consist in the construction of huge, quite deep artificial lagoons to be fill by the rain during the raining season; It was a popular system in the coast, though it was quite unstable method, because it did not guarantee the permanent water supply like the andenes; The andenes was the best agriculture method of all, because it was capable to produce stable and efficient all year around.

The incas had several agriculture investigation centers all over the kingdom; The most important of all is the circular andenes of Moray in Cuzco; Archaeologist believe that this center had hundreds of inca agriculture technicians working all year around, testing new plants, developing hybrids plants, making more resistance plants, making one plant that grow at 1000 mt over the sea level, been able to grow at 3000 mt over the sea level.

The inca agriculture technicians were capable to test plants at different altitudes, because the circular andenes of Moray resemble the ground temperature at different altitudes; Deeper circles are wormer, higher circles are colder, each level of the circular andenes is equal to 1000 mt of different climate from each other; The andenes of Moray is proof, that the incas knew that, the higher altitude influence the soil temperature and this affect the plants more than the air above the plants.

The inca agriculture knowledge still alive, because most of the andenes and waru waru agriculture areas are still in use today, as a matter of fact, the inca hydraulics irrigation system and the drain systems of the andenes, still working perfectly until today, none of this inca constructions had need maintenance at all; It is absolutely amazing how well the incas develop, design and build such perfect agriculture methods.

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