1,000-year-old farming secrets could save the Amazon rainforest

[jpak]

http://io9.com/5900467/1000+year+old-farming-secrets-could-save-the-amazon-rainforest

The Amazon covers over 2.5 million square miles. But that number is shrinking all the time, and the widespread deforestation could doom our hopes for averting catastrophic global climate change. That's why some ancient farming secrets could make a huge difference.
Top image: CIFOR on Flickr.

It's probably not even worth trying to comprehend the scale of the Amazon rainforest. It encompasses more than half of all the world's remaining rainforest, and it's home to about a tenth of all the world's known species, with about 90,000 tons of biomass for every square miles. And, perhaps most importantly, the Amazon stores about a tenth of the planet's stored carbon, equivalent to about 100 billion tons.

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Now, an international team of archaeologists have made an intriguing discovery — the peoples who farmed the Amazon long before the arrival of Europeans did so without burning down trees to clear room for their fields. That goes against the longstanding assumption that all Amazonian farmers both pre- and post-European contact have relied on fire to hold back the jungle and manage their land.

Instead, these indigenous farmers used something known as raised-field farming, which is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. They built small mounds all along the savannas that form the periphery of the rainforest, and then they farmed on these artificial mounds. While the elevated fields were almost certainly a pain in the ass to make, the benefits were huge — they naturally drained and aerated the soil while still retaining moisture. In a region known in equal measure for floods and droughts, that's a pretty nifty bit of agricultural engineering.

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[Kali]

1. self contraditictory story/excerpt (didn't go to link)

by definition peripheral savanna is NOT the forest, so the described technique is not "farming the Amazon"

see also "terra preta" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_preta

[DCKit]

2. I've been adding charcoal to my soil for several years now.

I've never seen such strong and healthy plants, and healthy plants have a way of fighting off diseases and pests all on their own.

Our greenhouse was (except for a drip hose) unattended for three and a half months this past winter, and I had five pounds of beautiful potatoes (with plenty of little ones to replant), eleven tall chard plants and 21sq ft of healthy, tender greens when I went out a month back to open the house for the spring and summer.