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Cultivating Diversity: Field Scattering as Agricultural Risk Management in Cuyo Cuyo, Department of Puno, Peru
Footnotes to Chapter 6
1 This action and all which followed from it provides a fascinating account, but is better left for another time and forum.
2 Specifically, I believe it may have failed to capture the full inventory of crop varieties planted in each field.
3 As an example, when all crops but corn had already been harvested from the chakra experimental, a cow entered and destroyed the remaining plants. This provided me the unpleasant opportunity to learn, first-hand, rights and procedures regarding claims of crop damage. Unfortunately, since the cow in question belonged to the tentiente gobernador--the same authority who adjudicates such complaints--my request for compensation did not fall on sympathetic ears.
4 Possibly Franseria fruticosa (see Weberbauer 1945:198).
5 As described in Chapter 5, 1985-86 was a particularly wet year. Harvest of potato fields in the floodplain of Ura Ayllu was accelerated because of concern that the tubers would rot.
6 Although in Cuyo Cuyo this distinctive form of cultivation is not given a unique name, elsewhere in the Andes this practice is identified as tipka, or siembra en crudo (Mayer 1979).
7 I note here that at this time of the year, Sandinos plant a potato crop which is irrigated - qarpa papa. Although it is winter, at these lower elevations (approx. 2200 meters), temperatures are moderate enough that a crop can be grown. However, they are frequently in need of seed for the planting. I was told that the Sandinos plant two crops of potato during the year. The qarpa papa are planted in late May and harvested in early September. Another cropping follows immediately and is harvested in January. Thus, either through failure to accurately calculate, or maintain seed stores from January to May, there is a scarcity of seed for the qarpa planting. This underscores that energy and material transfers do not occur in a closed system.
8 It should be noted that measuring work effort as done here (time spent in a given activity) is at best a rough estimate. It says nothing about how hard people actually work while they are in the field. It is entirely possible that in terms of energy expenditure, work effort per unit time is equivalent between the two production zones. Because of the time and distance involved in travelling to the Awi Awi fields, people might actually work harder while there, in order to avoid additional trips to complete tasks.
9 The most likely explanation for this is that the area measurement for at least one of these fields is incorrect. Of the three fields, separate measurements were made in one case for the area cropped with papa milli and papa panq'o, because the dimensions of the area cropped was known to have changed (in fact, the area cropped with papa panq'o was greater than the area cropped in papa milli). If either of the remaining two fields were reduced in area, but not reported as such, this would explain the anomalously low labor intensity calculations derived for this set of fields.
10 Unfortunately, one of these fields was never measured, and calculation of its area is based on the informant's own calculation. My suspicion is that this estimate is too large. Thus all of the calculations of labor intensity for this set of fields are low.
11 Orlove and Godoy's (1987) study of sectorial fallowing systems in the Andes found no significant relation between fallow ratio and elevation. However, their analysis included only sectorial fallowing systems. Here, I am including the non-manda lands of Cuyo Cuyo in my statement.
12 Most researchers believe that intensification (defined as shortening of fallow) is a response to population/land pressure and commercialization. The latter is not a concern in Cuyo Cuyo. However, it is interesting to note that in Ñacoreque--where land is abundant enough that it can be rented--the fallow ratio is at least as high if not higher than lands at comparable elevations in the two study communities.
