Sustainable Small-Scale Agriculture in Semi-Arid Environments

Abstract

For at least the past 8000 years, small-scale farmers in semi-arid environments have had to mitigate shortfalls in crop production due to variation in precipitation and stream flow. To reduce their vulnerability to a shortfall in their food supply, small-scale farmers developed short-term strategies, including storage and community-scale sharing, to mitigate inter-annual variation in crop production, and long-term strategies, such as migration, to mitigate the effects of sustained droughts. We use the archaeological and paleoclimatic records from A.D. 900-1600 in two regions of the American Southwest to explore the nature of variation in the availability of water for crops, and the strategies that enhanced the resilience of prehistoric agricultural production to climatic variation. Drawing on information concerning contemporary small-scale farming in semi-arid environments, we then suggest that the risk coping and mitigation strategies that have endured for millennia are relevant to enhancing the resilience of contemporary farmers' livelihoods to environmental and economic perturbations.

Managing the risk of climatic variability in late prehistoric northern Chile

“…Strategies of diversification depend on a drought's complex spatial patterning across the landscape and the fact that not all plants and domesticated animals are affected in the same ways. These approaches include preferential selection of droughtresistant crops, multi-cropping (planting a variety of crops within the same field), crop rotation, supplementation with wild foods, shifting the balance of investment between agricultural and pastoral activities, cultivation of spatially disparate fields, mobility of part or all of the household or community between areas of differential resource availability, and migration (Anderies et al, 2008;Baker and Hoffman, 2006;Gallant, 1989;Goland, 1993;Legge, 1989;Marston, 2011;McLeaman and Smit, 2006;O'Shea, 1989;Shipton, 1990;Spielmann et al, 2011;Winterhalder et al, 1999;Wiessner, 1982a).…”

Food, Water, and Scarcity

“…There is abundant archaeological and historical evidence that drought and desertification produce large-scale, permanent migration (Spielmann et al 2011). In the archaeological record, examples include the Maya (Lucero 2002), Tiwanaku (Ortloff and Kolata 1993), and Mimbres (Spielmann et al 2011).…”

“…There is abundant archaeological and historical evidence that drought and desertification produce large-scale, permanent migration (Spielmann et al 2011). In the archaeological record, examples include the Maya (Lucero 2002), Tiwanaku (Ortloff and Kolata 1993), and Mimbres (Spielmann et al 2011). In the recent historical record, welldocumented agricultural cases include droughts in the United States (Gutmann et al 2005), Canada (Gilbert and McLeman 2010), and Mali (Findley 1994).…”

Characterizing the rural landscape during the Iron Age and Roman period (ca. 1200b.c.–a.d.400): An intensive survey of Wadi al-Feidh, southern Jordan

“…Given these factors, it is unlikely that Iron Age communities living in Wadi al-Feidh procured their subsistence from agricultural production alone. Instead, the locations of these small settlements in areas that provided access to multiple resources may reflect a subsistence strategy of resource diversification and mixed agro-pastoralism, a common practice amongst groups inhabiting environmentally marginal areas (Marston 2011;Spielmann et al 2011). …”