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Abstract
The global shift to small- and medium-scale irrigation is potentially compatible with high-agrobiodiversity production. A case study of the Cochabamba region in central Bolivia between 1990 and 2002 is designed to examine new interactions of irrigation with agrobiodiversity through change and continuity of landscape structures and functions. Irrigation change contributed to increased commercial potato and peach farming. Still persistent interactions of canal woodland habitat (landscape matrix including uncultivated or “wild” agrobiodiversity) with patches of cultivated agrobiodiversity helped ensure nutrient transfer and likelihood of gene flow. Farmers' field-level responses continued to include agrobiodiversity, especially multiple farmer varieties (FVs) of Andean maize. Capacities of social–ecological resilience in the period from 1990 to 2002 are estimated to have been moderate in anthropogenic canal woodlands (> 95 percent continued cover, albeit with reduced connectivity) and cultivated agrobiodiversity (viable with local loss of Andean potato FVs) and moderate-high in wild agrobiodiversity (viable with reduced capacity due to modified weed management). Indigenous “ethnodevelopment” applied to Andean community irrigation contributed positively to social–ecological resilience, albeit with significant limitations. Findings recommend that global change policies build emphasis on the interactions of water resource and agrobiodiversity management.
El reorientación global hacia la irrigación de pequeña y mediana escala es potencialmente compatible con la producción de gran agrobiodiversidad. Entre 1990 y 2002, se diseñó un estudio de caso en la región de Cochabamba, parte central de Bolivia, para examinar nuevas interacciones de la irrigación con la agrobiodiversidad a través del cambio, y la continuidad de las estructuras y funciones del paisaje. El cambio en irrigación contribuyó al incremento de la comercialización de los cultivos de papa y durazno. Las interacciones que todavía se mantienen entre los hábitats de arbolado en canal (una matriz del paisaje que incluye agrobiodiversidad “silvestre” o no cultivada) con los sembrados de agrobiodiversidad cultivada, ayudan a asegurar la transferencia de nutrientes y la posibilidad de flujo de genes. Las respuestas de los cultivadores a nivel de campo siguieron incluyendo la agrobiodiversidad, en especial las variedades para cultivador múltiple (FVs) de maíz andino. Se estima que las capacidades de resiliencia social-ecológica en el período 1990–2002 fueron moderadas en los arbolados de canal (> 95 por ciento de cubierta continua, aunque con conectividad reducida) y agrobiodiversidad cultivada (viable con pérdida local de FVs de la papa andina) y entre moderada y alta en la agrobiodiversidad silvestre (viable con capacidad reducida debida al manejo de malezas modificado). El “etnodesarrolo” indígena aplicado a la irrigación comunitaria andina contribuyó positivamente a la resiliencia social-ecológica, aunque con significativas limitaciones. Lo descubierto permite recomendar que las políticas de cambio global hagan énfasis sobre las interacciones del recurso hídrico con el manejo de la agrobiodiversidad.
Acknowledgments
His research interests are focused on the dynamics of agrobiodiversity water resources in land use and ecosystems, the political ecology of development and environmental change including food issues, and spatial-environmental knowledge systems and applications.
Notes
*The 2001–2005 phase of this research was funded through NSF BC 0240962 and the Kellett Faculty Award of the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Research on indigenous ethnodevelopment was supported though a one-year fellowship at the Agrarian Studies Program at Yale University. Research collaboration and assistance involved a large number of institutions and individuals in Bolivia and elsewhere. Additional special gratitude is owed to Bolivia-based AGRUCO; CERES; CIDRE; CENDA; Luis Rojas, Teresa Hosse, and their teams; Delfín Alvarez, Rosemary Camacho, and Freddy Villagomez; as well as Eric Carter and Martha Bell. Helpful feedback and suggestions were received in talks at Rutgers University and the University of California and from anonymous reviewers.
1 The term inter-Andean valleys, which refers to deep structural depressions below 3,000 m in the central Andes, is an appropriate designation for the general physiography and distinct vegetation of these landscapes (CitationYoung et al. 2007). Widespread irrigated agriculture dates to more than 1,000 years ago in the inter-Andean valleys, particularly those of the Central Andes of present-day Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia (CitationDenevan 2001). Notwithstanding impressive history, widespread and continuing changes, arguably of unprecedented magnitude, have occurred in irrigated Andean landscapes during recent decades.
2 More broadly, agrodiversity encompasses the combination of high-biodiversity domesticated organisms, the uncultivated taxa that are closely related, and the agricultural environments, landscapes, and land users' management and knowledge that support this production (CitationBrookfield and Padoch 1994). The Andean global agrobiodiversity center includes both the uplands (above 2,800–3,500 m), where the farming of Andean potatoes, tubers, and temperate cereals (e.g., quinoa) is predominant and better studied, and the intermediate-elevation valleys, which are characterized by cultivation of maize, beans, and numerous other Andean crop species (CitationZimmerer 1995, Citation1999).
3 The Calicanto maize types also are classified taxonomically as belonging to the biologically unique “core Andean types” (CitationSánchez et al. 2006), primarily found in Bolivia and Peru. Classification of the “core Andean types” through genetic sequencing methods and analysis offered the most recent findings in a decades-long series of research supporting the agrobiodiversity status of the Andes as a secondary global center of the varietal and intraspecific variation of the cultivated maize crop following the combined geographic area of central and southern Mexico and northern Central America (see CitationBrandolini 1970).
4 Regrettably, space constraint limits a standard methodology section. In synthesis, following the field visit in 1987, my research on the Calicanto irrigation landscape has occurred during ten years of seasonal fieldwork between 1990 and 2009, including a prolonged period of eighteen months (1990–1991), three years in the 1990s (1994, 1996, 1998) and four years more recently (2003, 2004, 2008, 2009). This research has been affiliated with CIDRE and other local and regional NGOs, as well as farmer and irrigator groups. Research methods have included ethnographic, semistructured, and survey interviews with farmers, villagers, NGOs, development personnel, and resource-user organizations; the sampling and taxonomic identification of cultivated and uncultivated plants; soil sampling and analysis; geomorphic measurements; and GIS analysis using the GIS database of the Calicanto irrigated area constructed between 2004 and 2006. The database contains approximately 3,500 fields and 60 km of canals and is being expanded to analyze the extent of land cover parameters such as woody plant vegetative cover and agricultural field types. Common GIS tools (feature selection, buffer, overlay, etc.) were used in this study to analyze the spatial relationships between irrigation canals and the presence and extent of woody vegetation (see also note 6).
5 This shift occurred in conjunction with the establishment of more centralized governance through the Irrigators' Association (Asociación de Regantes, AR). On the extensive literature on the social organization, cultural models, and role of the state in Andean irrigation see, for example, CitationGuillet (1992) and CitationTrawick (2003).
6 The other major area of woody vegetation estimated from 1990 aerial photographs occurred principally in the channel of the Río Calicanto, in woodlots and, to a lesser extent, adjacent to houses and within fields. Taken together, woody vegetation covered slightly less than half the uncultivated area within the Calicanto landscape. It is estimated that the uncultivated area represents approximately 20 percent of the total GIS coverage of the Calicanto irrigation landscape, which measures 1,183 hectares or 11.8 km2. This GIS coverage is estimated to encompass approximately 75 to 80 percent of the total Calicanto irrigated landscape. In general the Calicanto canal woodland is a special focus of my study, because it is well suited to development and application of air photo and GIS methods that have not been utilized previously in research on either irrigation woodlands or agrobiodiversity.
7 “Primary canals” included four principal segments (see ) that took water from the main supply aqueduct from the Laka Laka reservoir and, prior to dam completion, had previously diverted flow from the R. Calicanto channel. These canals fed directly into the ones defined as “secondary canals,” some of which subsequently supplied water to canals designated as “tertiary.”
8 Paleobotanical and archaeological evidence indicates that this tree has been utilized in the central Andes since pre-European times (CitationTowle 1961). Tara, which means “flattened” in Aymara (CitationCárdenas 1989), is also the presumed root word of the naming of Tarata (“place of the tara”), which is the town that serves as the provincial capital located at the head of the Calicanto alluvial fan.
9 Although most Calicanto people are generally aware of plant uses as medicine, it is women in the area who tend to be most highly informed and involved in the application of this knowledge.
10 Presumed similarity of woody cover between 2002 and 2006 is derived from findings of field studies in 2008 and 2009 that showed a lack of discernable recent expansion or contraction of tree and shrub cover.
11 Conspecific taxonomic designations (i.e., within a single species) are recognized for most combinations of crops and the closely related uncultivated types, including all the ones in this study.
12 Recent concern about possible introgression of genetic material from cultivated types representing genetically modified organisms is inapplicable, thus far, to the Calicanto irrigation landscape because such crop types remain absent from the region.
13 These characteristics include poisonous qualities (e.g., k'ita papa, the uncultivated Andean potatoes, and k'ita purutu, the uncultivated Andean common bean) as well as fodder restricted to use for livestock (especially sheep and cattle) and other animals (e.g., k'ita kinwa, the uncultivated Andean quinoa).
14 FVs, also known as landraces and cultivars, are defined geographically and ecologically as having “a limited geographic range and adapted to the low input agriculture” (CitationGepts, Osborn, and Rashka 1986, 453).
15 This designation referred to the calendar of planting, which occurred in late August and September, well prior to the onset of the rainy season. Irrigation made possible the cropping of mishka potatoes.
16 Such patch–matrix interactions occurred even in the absence of adjacency. For example, flows of irrigation water through canal woodlands carried detritus across field areas. Similarly, farmers' direct use of soil amendments involved transport to the entire surface of fields and to nonproximate fields and thus not only to the nearest within-field areas.
17 A similar insight, and one that helped inspire this research, is inferred in comprehensive landscape-scale treatments of tree and landscape diversity in the Andes that could possibly be related to irrigation (CitationGade 1999). Although also containing the analysis of cultivated agrobiodiversity, the cited work does not focus on direct interconnections among agrobiodiversity, irrigation, and woodlands.