GENERATIONAL
CROPS GROWN, WITH METHODS USED FOR FAR MORE THAN
A 1,000 YEARS 

THE ANDES ARE SOME OF THE TALLEST, STARKEST MOUNTAINS IN THE WORLD.

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Yet the Inkas coaxed harvests from the Andes’ sharp slopes and intermittent waterways. They developed resilient breeds of crops such as potatoes, quinoa, corn and much more. 

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At a height in the 1400s the Inkan civilization’s systems of terraces covered about a million hectares throughout Peru and fed the vast empire.

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Inkan agriculture has been methodized and used for thousands of years from farming & herding in the high elevated Andes mountains of South America, the coastal deserts, and the rainforests of the Amazon.

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Cultivated crops across the Empire included maize, coca, beans, grains, potatoes, sweet potatoes, ulluco, oca, mashwa, pepper, tomatoes, peanuts, cashews, squash, cucumber, quinoa, gourd, cotton, talwi, carob, chirimoya, lúcuma, guayabo, and avocado. 

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The harvest from these was used as offerings in shrines, and one particular field was reserved for the ceremonial planting of the year's first maize. It was here, in the month of August, that the Inca king ceremoniously tilled the first soil of the year with a golden plough. The sacred Coricancha, which had a temple to the Inca sun god Inti, even had a life-size field of corn made purely from gold and silver complete with precious metal animals. Today, in a corner of the Andes, people are breathing new life into ancient practices.

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