An important discovery of an ancient agricultural technique capable of stabilizing the harvest!

As the climate around the world becomes increasingly harsh and unpredictable, concerns are growing about the food security of our world.

Production of staple crops such as corn and wheat is already declining in the tropics at low latitudes and in dry regions such as the African drylands and parts of the Mediterranean. Rich countries are far from immune. In Australia, yields fell by almost 30% between 1990 and 2015 due to reduced rainfall.

While studying dietary diversity in 2011, ecologist Morgan Rowell, now at Clark University, stumbled upon a possible method that could help stabilize crop size.

This once widespread practice is now only used by small farms in places like the Caucasus, the Greek Islands and the Horn of Africa. Even though it was very simple, it was not familiar to much of the agroecology community.

However, farmers have been using this technique for over 3,000 years in at least 27 countries. Perhaps this is what led to the emergence of agriculture.

The method is to grow grains – a complex mixture of grains that can include rice, millet, wheat, rye, barley and others – and bring them all together to share or use as a single product.

While at Cornell University, Rowell and colleagues reviewed previous work showing that olive fillings provide greater stability under changing conditions. By changing the composition of species each season, farmers can hedge against climate impacts without the need for additional intervention.

“It’s this reactive entity that’s constantly evolving,” says Rowell. “It works on its own, out of the farmer’s control, reacting to whatever happens. So no matter what, you can make bread out of it.”

This process allows the environment to choose which species will thrive. If environmental conditions continue to change in one direction, then the next season’s seed mixture will also change in the same direction. It’s faster than evolution. If you have one weak species, adaptation takes a long time, explains ethnobotanist Alex McCalvey, now at the New York Botanical Gardens.

When drought occurs, the resulting crop will contain, for example, more drought tolerant barley strains and less wheat. But the wheat is still there to control it if the rainy season ever comes.

The researchers advised against monoculture, which in many cases can be beneficial because growing multiple crops is much better for pest control, fertilizer, wildlife health, and sustainability. However, polyculture is problematic for large-scale farming, which uses machinery to harvest and process crops.

Since the same machine can be used to harvest each type of grain in the olive mixture, the scope of the operation can be expanded. Modern industry has experience in sorting grain on a large scale.

The olive still conveys many of the environmental benefits of multiple crops that include vastly different plant types, such as disease resistance and pest control, which require less reliance on pesticides that cause all sorts of damage to wildlife.

This review was published in the journal Agronomy. for Sustainable development.

Source: Science Alert

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