Chiloé Agriculture, Chile
GIAHS since 2011
Archipelago of Chiloé in Chile is an unique in-situ reserve of many species underlying the invaluable farmers’ work for millennia. It has been considered the home of many species of endemic flora and fauna in danger of extinction, being its biodiversity of global importance.
In the past rural women have carried out biodiversity conservation activities in the small plots of their family vegetable gardens. Having the potato as much importance for the maintenance of the life in these remote islands of Chile, it is not surprising that related to their culture and great variety of uses ancestral social practices, beliefs and mythology were developed, many of which in the dawn of the third millennium are still in use.
Traditionally Indigenous communities and farmers of Chiloé cultivated native varieties of potatoes which went from 800 to 1,000, before the agricultural modernization. Indeed, there has been a generalized erosive process of the genetic materials which has resulted in a reduced amount of varieties in the most isolated zones of the archipelago.
News
Mash hits: the land that spawned the supermarket spud
Off the coast of northern Patagonia, some 1,220km south of the capital of Chile, lies an island shaped like a peanut. The patchwork farms and wood-shingled churches of Chiloé lie below moody skies that often unleash horizontal raindrops amid howling winds. Get enough drizzle in your eyes to blur out the volcanoes in the distance, and you’d swear the radiant green hills belonged not in South America, but half a world away in Ireland. And just like Ireland, the staple crop on Chiloé is the potato. Read more
Brochure
Presentation of two GIAHS sites that rely on agroecology
Chiloé agriculture is a highly integrated and self-sufficient system. It relies on the agrobiodiversity supported by traditional agricultural practices to efficiently use natural resources from the sea, forest and livestock for soil health improvement and for integrated pest management. And also, Huzhou Mulberry-dyke and Fish Pond System includes traditional and agroecological knowledge through the cultivation of mulberry trees, silkworm rearing, and fish cultivation, based on a complex irrigation system. This system allows farmers to meet their needs, while protecting biodiversity and the landscape.
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