A spotlight article in the UN FAO Agriculture 21 Magazine, Agricultural heritage systems, describes a project to promote fashionable approaches to food security issues in developing countries that the FAO calls Globally-important Ingenious Agricultural Heritage Systems (GIAHS). They are described as "sustainable land use systems and landscapes that have evolved through the dynamic adaptation of farming communities to their environment."

Stripped of hype these are successful subsistence agricultural systems. They have some resilience that derives from mixed use general farming. When one crop fails another may still succeed or livestock may sustain them. Such systems are integrated with natural environments which provide further diversity and some opportunities for hunting or gathering in addition to agricultural activities. Such systems don't provide the surpluses that allow development, specialization, education, health care or any of the cherished attributes of developed countries but they are sustainable in the sense that there is no immediate danger of environmental or social collapse so long as the safety valve of emigration for surplus population can relieve stress. The techniques used in these various systems are presented as being novel and valuable. There is concern that such evolved tacit knowledge will be lost due to development pressures as newer high production agricultural techniques are adopted.

But it's just romantic nonsense. The techniques used are in no danger of being lost and they're not unique to any single location or culture. The illusion of uniqueness comes from a combination of ignorance on the part of advocates that influence the UN and a regressive world view. These advocates are marching into the future looking back over their shoulders nostalgically at the past.

A more useful approach to evaluating agroeconomic systems is to identify patterns, to understand particular solutions to general problems and see them as part of a continuum of human inventions. For example, the historical raised bed growing system called waru-waru by residents of the Altiplano of Puno in Southern Peru, highlighted in the article, is a local variant of similar systems practiced all over the Americas as well as many other places in the world. The basic idea is that channels are dug in fields to create alternating strips of low and high ground. In Puno this system collects and conserves water, leaches out salts and creates a warm microclimate favorable to crops in the thin cool air. The same system was used in the marshy lowlands of tropical Mexico as a way to drain waterlogged fields as well as creating a favorable microclimate. Such systems are thousands of years old as well as being standard practice for modern industrial agriculturalists. There's a support industry to manufacture machinery to automate the creation of raised beds fields. A wealth of academic research exists that quantifies the effects of various sized raised beds in varying soil types and climates. Back yard gardeners use the same techniques for kitchen gardens. The size of the beds varies with location, conditions and crops but the principle is the same, the pattern is the same.

The ancient waru-waru system had been abandoned in Puno due to social and economic collapse when the area was conquered by the Incas over 500 years ago but was revived in 1986 with the assistance of several international academic groups. It seems more sensible to view this as the transfer of appropriate technologies to a developing region than as continuation of a tradition. The tradition hadn't been practiced for 500 years. More generally, the transfer of technologies that can be feasibly implemented under existing local conditions is a more useful approach than romanticizing subsistence traditions.

This is more than splitting hairs about how these activities are described. The UN GIAHS approach seeks to enshrine subsistence societies, to prevent them from developing. This is foolish since these systems are not able to produce to the level required for growing populations. The technology transfer approach seeks to help these societies evolve by sharing methods developed in other places and other times that help them smoothly progress, that fit with their existing agronomic and economic capabilities rather than imposing a revolution in methods. The tacit knowledge of practitioners with long experience in localities is real and valuable, but that doesn't mean that they won't benefit from the methods and discoveries of others. What it means is that they must have control of the implementation of new knowledge so that they can select useful methods and adapt them to local circumstances. Respecting their knowledge and skill is smart but respecting their good sense to adopt useful new ideas is even smarter.