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An agricultural practice with a long-standing tradition

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Posted on 2018-02-09 in
Seeding, tilling, and harvesting maize. Image taken from the Florentine Codex

Seeding, tilling, and harvesting maize. Image taken from the 16th-century Florentine Codex. World Digital Library.

Enthusiasts for books concerned with ancient agricultural practices might have come across engravings of folk digging a pointed stick in the ground to seed the soil. More recent documentary footage of cultures where ancestral farming techniques are still alive shows the use of the said digging implement, notably in woodland, or rather forestland, cleared by the slash-and-burn method, in which native vegetation is cut down and burned off, the ashes serving as fertilizer for the new crops. Coa is one name given to the digging stick. (more…)

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