The Maya were skillful farmers. They used their knowledge of calendars and seasons to grow crops. In the beginning, they grew more food than they needed. City-states did trade some surplus food for other items. But most of the surplus food was stored by each city-state to feed anyone who needed it in that city-state.
As the population grew, farmers found it ever more difficult to grow enough food to feed the growing population. Farming was difficult in the Maya region. There were dense forests, little surface water such as rivers and lakes, and the soil was poor. But the Maya were clever.
The Maya did not try to use one system of agriculture. The farmers in each city-state fit their system to the land.
- In the mountainous highlands, they used step farming, so that each step would be flat and able to be irrigated to better grow and harvest crops.
- In the swampy lowlands, the Maya built raised earth platforms, surrounded by canals, on which they could grow crops. (Later on, the Aztecs improved on this system, and built floating gardens.)
- In the dense forest, they used a slash and burn technique to create a flat surface to plant crops. They dug canals throughout the fields to irrigate the crops.
Aztecs
When the Aztec people finally found a place to settle down, they did so on rather marshy land around a lake. Some of the land was not very good for gardening. As the population grew, the Aztecs needed to find a way to grow more food. They could have built further away from the cities, but then they would need to guard the fields from robbers.
Instead, the clever Aztec engineers created “floating” gardens. The floating gardens were actually rafts. The rafts were anchored to the bottom of the lake, or to a strong tree in the marsh. They piled vegetation and reeds on top of the raft to help provide good soil and drainage. On top of this, they piled dirt. They planted seeds in the dirt. The gardens were used to grow chili peppers, corn, tomatoes, beans, and squash.
It was somewhat difficult to harvest the food since the gardens were floating in marsh water. To solve this, Aztec engineers built mud and stone walls around each floating garden. The walls acted as walkways between the gardens.
The floating gardens solved some of their problem, but as their population grew, they needed more land. Their engineers solved this by designing dikes to hold back water. They filled in the marshlands and swamps just as they had the rafts, the floating gardens.
Incas
Nobody went hungry in the Inca empire. The commoners ate little meat, but all people ate well.
The Inca were the first to grow potatoes. There were many crops. The big three were corn, potatoes, and quinoa, which is a seed used to make flour and soups.
The three staple crops were corn, potatoes, and quinoa - quinoa seeds were used to make cereal, flour, and soups. They planted grew tomatoes, avocados, peppers, strawberries, peanuts, squash, sweet potatoes, beans, pineapple, bananas, spices, and coco leaves to make chocolate. They kept honeybees.
The Inca grew more food than they needed. Stored food was dried and kept in special buildings. Because they lived high in the Andes, where it was often cold, it was easy to dry food. First, they left it out to freeze. Then they stamped on it until most of the water was out. They left it out in the sun to finish drying. And presto - dried food.
The Inca invented terrace farming. They lived in the mountains. Flatlands were rare. So, they simply created flat land by building steps of land for agriculture down the mountainside. This was great for irrigation. Instead of rainwater running down the mountainside, the Inca channeled it through each step. They also built aqueducts to carry water where it was needed.
They were great farmers, with clever solutions to their farming problems.
http://incas.mrdonn.org/farming.html
