Could this Lost Crops of the Incas Save Your Life?

I’m a bit of a weird crop junkie. I admit it.

My neighbors grow potatoes… I grow cassava. They grow peas… I grow moringa. They plant tomatoes… I plant naranjillas.

The plant geekiness I embrace may or may not be your cup of tea, but there’s definitely a value in growing things that people can’t recognize and won’t know how to use. A plant that doesn’t look like “food” won’t be stolen from your yard. This is why I’m very interested in edible landscaping and other forms of clandestine gardening. And it’s also why I took note when one of my blog readers sent me a note about a little-known book called “Lost Crops of the Incas.”

“The primary purpose here is to draw attention to overlooked food crops of the Andes. The crops are not truly lost; indeed, most are well known in many areas of the Andes, especially among Indian groups. It is to the mainstream of international science and to people outside the Andes that they are “lost.” Moreover, most of these crops were developed by ancient Indian tribes and were established foods long before the beginning of the Inca Empire about 1400 AD. For all that, however, it was the Incas who, by the time of the Spanish Conquest, had brought these plants to their highest state of development and, in many cases, had spread them throughout the Andean region.

It should be understood that we are not the first to appreciate the potential of these crops. Several agronomists and ethnobotanists—many of them working in the Andes—have begun preserving what remains of these traditional Indian foods. Indeed, a handful of dedicated Andean researchers have studied these plants intensively, and have struggled for decades to promote them in the face of deeply ingrained prejudices in favor of European food. Moreover, their efforts have sparked interest outside the region. Some of the plants are already showing promise in exploratory trials in other tropical highlands as well as in more temperate zones. For instance, cultivation of quinoa (a grain) has begun in the United States, oca (a tuber) is an increasingly popular food with New Zealanders, tarwi (a grain legume) is stimulating attention in Eastern Europe, and cherimoya (a fruit) has long been an important crop in Spain…”

You can download a copy from the National Academy of the Sciences here:

http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=1398

I’m enjoying the book thus far and look forward to trying some of these plants in my yard. When it comes to TEOTWAWKI, watermelons and tomatoes are going to vanish like ghosts… but I doubt thieves are gonna rip off your mauka or ocas.

Read up now and get what you can.

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