ABSTRACT
The agricultural landscape of Ecuador is a diverse mosaic of farms with differing objectives, resources, and technologies. Much of the highlands are controlled by large farms, which exclude subsistence farmers from access to desirable soils. Soil fertility is managed using household manure supplies, irrigation, fallowing, rotation, and the harvesting of ditch and tank silt. The humid flats had been reclaimed with raised fields, providing drainage, access to water for irrigation, frost control, and, most important, silt and muck accumulation for frequent spreading on field tops. In any given adaptive context, some niches will be used more intensively than others, with varying environmental impacts. The sophistication of traditional technology should be apparent, as well as its flexibility in dealing with environmental, demographic, socioeconomic, and cultural change. If a prerequisite of adaptation is variability, this precondition is amply met in the Andes.
