The Role of the Important Agricultural Heritage Systems
                     Five Major Perks Of 
Agricultural Heritage 
SAgryicusltutrael hemritagse systems may sound like they belong to the past, or 
like they are very limited to specific cultural contexts and thus unable to 
teach lessons that can elicit universal interest. They may sound like that, 
but that's not what they are: an agricultural heritage system might be 
being developed in your very own city, right now, while some system from 
Peru or India is being studied at an Ivy League college ecology department 
for lessons of how to manage crop production more efficiently. 
They sustain biodiversity on several 
layers.
With the role of biodiversity being increasingly recognized for both the role 
it plays in preventing the homogenization and genetic impoverishment of 
crops as well as in establishing networks of biological pest control, these 
agricultural heritage systems often act as a reservoir for landrace varieties of 
common crops (that sometimes have even evolved to be resistant of a 
specific plague) where that genetic diversity can be kept alive and evolving. 
This biodiversity means an increased stability in yields over time, as there is 
a consistently reduced chance of catastrophic failures for each year's 
harvests. In short, these systems sustain both a diversity of varieties of the 
crops they serve to grow, as well as a variety of species of insects and other 
animals that make them actual reservoirs of zoological biodiversity. Much 
like how the urban gardens could help save the bumblebees.
They Serve As Experimental Cases Of Study.
According to a 2011 FAO booklet, agricultural heritage systems are also live 
experiment grounds from which the scientists can discover new ways to 
improve the efficiency of commercially dominant food production systems. 
Or, as the FAO puts it:
"By studying traditional systems, scientists can learn more about the 
dynamics of complex systems, especially about the links between agricultural 
biodiversity and ecosystem function and thereby contribute to the 
enrichment of the ecological theory and derive principles for practical 
application in the design of modern sustainable farming systems. For 
example, in deciphering how intercropping practice works, farmers can take 
advantage of the ability of cropping systems to reuse their own stored 
nutrients. This information can be gleaned to improve the ways in which 
farmers can manage soil fertility."
They Are Essential For Food Security.
Tied to these two last points, agricultural heritage systems also serve as 
barriers against famine in their local areas, especially with the looming 
threat of climate change, and they could very much improve the stability 
and safety of all areas of the world that start to face similar challenges to the 
ones that these systems faced during their creation. The tassa farming 
techniques of the western Sahel or the systems of acequias of southern 
Spain are just a couple of examples of low-technology, simple ways of facing 
permanent or frequent drought conditions, while the famous systems of 
terracing that are used in millions of acres of slopes across South Asia and 
South America could help to turn steep land into productive farmland, as 
more and more plains around the world start to be flooded by rising sea 
levels.
They generate cultural changes, for the 
better.
Agricultural heritage systems are, almost necessarily, a communal affaire. Be 
they managed by just a few families, by villages, by many or just a few 
people separately or together, agricultural heritage systems create cultural 
ties around them that generate a new way to look at food production, a new 
culture of cultivation that challenges the dominant paradigm that 
sustainable and efficient food production requires tractors, an uninterrupted 
flow of fertilizers and pesticides, and acres upon acres of land where a single 
species is grown. They also serve as a space for the interaction of all the 
members of a community in the pursuit of a common goal, and could serve 
to combat the hidden epidemic of loneliness that hits the US and the whole 
developed world.
They are alive and expanding, and new 
ones can be created.
Probably the best perk of agricultural heritage systems, however, is that 
their number is not fixed. As much as they can die if the communities built 
around them stop taking care of them (due to migration, changing climate, 
better economic opportunities for the young elsewhere, war or any of the 
many challenges that communities around the globe face), they can also 
begin from scratch if a community or just a single individual start the task of 
creating one.
The whole aim of the permaculture movement, in fact, could perhaps be 
defined as the creation of new agricultural heritage systems, where the 
'perma' part of permaculture is the permanency of the system over time, 
across generations. A legacy for the future generations can be started today, 
and it can be both efficient and productive: that is, in the end, the greatest 
perk of agricultural heritage systems, and the secret of their survival until 
today.
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