Yeah, its predecessor was biodynamic ag, which had all this weird stuff incorporating the zodiac and belief in vitalism and burying whole ass animals in your fields. The only really useful bits are "don't saturate the environment with chemicals" and "support soil organic matter content"

[–] AtmosphericRiversCuomo@hexbear.net 11 points 2 months ago (1 children)

The other innovation of biodynamic gardening was, "you can plant things closer together than we were taught", and like, yeah that's probably some ancient technique we just forgot and had to relearn.

[–] BodyBySisyphus@hexbear.net 15 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, the European settlers in the Americas were pretty bad at doing agriculture. Reading accounts of the early colonists observing native agriculture is kinda entertaining; it's all stuff like "OMG guys they're producing so much food! How are they doing this while we're literally starving over here, their corn ears are enormous!"

[–] AtmosphericRiversCuomo@hexbear.net 8 points 2 months ago (2 children)

tbf corn is a heavy feeder and hard to grow, but yeah, only because we foolishly gave up on any kind of traditional methods.

[–] AtmosphericRiversCuomo@hexbear.net 10 points 2 months ago (1 children)

ancient civilizations arising every time they get good at growing corn gigachad

my dumb ass trying to grow corn agony-wholesome

[–] BodyBySisyphus@hexbear.net 7 points 2 months ago

My condolences on your maize troubles. I don't have the space for it :(

[–] BodyBySisyphus@hexbear.net 6 points 2 months ago

Well it's also a tropical grass they were growing as far north as New York, so they were well outside the native bioregion.