Farming the Future — A conversation about Indigenous agriculture and resilience

Agriculture is one of the industries most exposed to the climate crisis: farmers worldwide suffer soaring temperatures, wildfires, floods, and drought. In addition to well-known climate mitigation strategies like genetic modification, recent decades have also seen calls for regenerative agriculture, a general term for practices that implement conservation methods like topsoil regeneration. But what we today call “regenerative agriculture” has been practiced by Indigenous peoples for millennia.

For over 3,000 years, the Hopi people have lived in the arid American Southwest. With less than 30 cm (12 in) of annual rainfall, Hopi dryland farming techniques raise corn, melon, beans, and squash year after year. But for the Hopi, agriculture is more than practices — farming is the lifeblood of a community, and a key element of cultural and spiritual life. In July 2024, Dr. Michael Kotutwa Johnson, a registered member of the Hopi tribe and professor at the University of Arizona, sat down with us to talk about the importance of Indigenous values to agriculture and human relationships with nature.

Johnson often calls himself a 253rd generation farmer, emphasizing the importance of generational knowledge to his work. “We have tons of tons of observations in order to … make sure that these crops grow, at least in our environment, where we only receive about six to ten inches of annual rainfall,” he explained. “When I was at Cornell [University], they told me that I needed 33 inches of rainfall. I thought they were a little bit crazy.”

Hopi corn can thrive with less than 30cm (12 in) of rainfall per year.

With countless seasons of careful selection, the crops cultivated by the Hopi people are perfectly adapted to their environment. In today’s world, where cash crops are grown in sprawling monocultures and bred to maximize growth, Indigenous agrarian communities like the Hopi continue to grow diverse crops with minimal disruption to the ecosystem.

“Fields are strategically placed to keep moisture from monsoon events,” Johnson said. “We don’t have to buy herbicides, pesticides, or mulch. We’re just using what’s given to us naturally.” Contrary to widespread corn varieties, Hopi corn is planted over 45 cm (18 in) deep using a traditional planting stick, which further helps it access and retain moisture. Generations of practice have resulted in these techniques that are suited to the environment, rather than changing the environment to suit human needs.

Hopi farmers like Johnson use planting sticks to sow corn deep in the soil.

In addition to working without artificial irrigation or fertilizers, Hopi farmers also encourage biodiversity to adapt to the increasing challenges of climate change. “When I plant my corn,” Johnson explained, “it doesn’t come up like a monocrop. It doesn’t come up at the same time. It doesn’t have the same size ear …. When I get a disease on one plant, it doesn’t just wipe out the whole thing. … The same thing with drought. … Those plants that survive, I’ll use that seed for next year, or another drought period.”

Hopi grow several varieties of corn, each with their own traits. They may be ground into cornmeal or dried for future use.

Contemporary conversations around the climate crisis often speak of stopping or reversing the process. For many Indigenous communities, however, adaptation is more important — and feasible — than entirely stopping forces of nature. Dozens of Native American tribes have climate adaptation plans¹, with a big focus on factors affecting food.

“We’re a society who tries to stop climate change,” Johnson said of our modern world. “We’re not teaching people how to adapt. [Adaptation] methods exist. We’ve done that many times before; we’ve had 200-year droughts [in Arizona]. We have stories to show us how to adapt.”

Hopi people and their crops will continue to adapt to changing conditions.

What does adaptation look like in a climate demonstrably warming every year? With the 1.5°C warming target just around the corner, agriculturalists are hard-pressed to genetically modify crops to adapt faster than nature allows. Adapting to new technologies is nothing new for the Hopi, who adopted machines like tractors; at the same time, many retain plots for hand planting to keep tradition alive.

Johnson’s dedication to traditional living extends to his home, which he built himself out of locally quarried sandstone.

For Johnson, a major hurdle in the adoption and use of genetically modified seeds is securing compensation for Indigenous communities who cultivated hardy genes in the first place. Just this year, members of the World Intellectual Property Organization agreed on the Treaty on Intellectual Property, Genetic Resources and Associated Traditional Knowledge². By ensuring that Indigenous communities can benefit from the use of their genetic resources through patents, such endeavors recognize the importance of  Indigenous knowledge in adapting to our changing climate.

The bigger challenge is education: knowledge of agriculture is disappearing as fewer young people engage with it. Traditionally, women have played a large role in farming, from choosing seeds to distributing the harvest — today, these and other practices are slowly vanishing. Johnson has spearheaded various educational initiatives to combat this decline, such as the One Seed, One Child program, where children are given a seed to plant and nurture. He is also the president of the Fred Aptvi Foundation, which is building a seed bank and conducting agricultural education programs in the Hopi language.

Through educational programs, Johnson continues to pass down agricultural knowledge.

Throughout the talk, Johnson returned to the point of keeping the “culture” in agriculture and respecting the natural world — and by extension, Indigenous knowledge. “Indigenous people now protect 80% of global biodiversity on just a mere 25% of the land. And they’re only 5% of the population,” he said. Their land management systems are built on millennia of experience and result in diverse, nutritious, resilient crops. And in turn, they make healthy communities.

“We’re using old traditional techniques that are still useful today,” Johnson said. “We don’t have to go look for science to make changes to our world.”

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1: Jones, N. (2020, February 10). How native tribes are taking the lead on planning for climate change. Yale Environment360. Retrieved August 20, 2024, from https://e360.yale.edu/features/how-native-tribes-are-taking-the-lead-on-planning-for-climate-change

2: WIPO member states adopt historic new Treaty on Intellectual Property, Genetic Resources and Associated Traditional Knowledge. (2024, May 24). WIPO – World Intellectual Property Organization. Retrieved August 20, 2024, from https://www.wipo.int/pressroom/en/articles/2024/article_0007.html