Based on the success of the experiments, between 1981 and 1987, my Peruvian colleagues and I began a small-scale, grassroots development project to rehabilitate pre-Columbian raised field agriculture in several native communities (Erickson 1996; Erickson and Candler 1989). By working with larger groups of farmers, we could expand the scale of the agronomic experiments and reach the people who could benefit from the knowledge (Fig. 7). Agronomists and development agents working in the Lake Titicaca basin, initially resistant to raised field rehabilitation, began to support the technology. By the late 1980s many nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and government agencies in Peru and Bolivia were promoting raised field rehabilitation (e.g., Kolata et al. 1996; PIWA 1994). According to some estimates, farmers of several hundred Quechua and Aymara communities rehabilitated between 500 and 1,500 hectares of raised fields by 1990. Our textbooks, extension manuals, and training video on raised field and terrace rehabilitation were widely circulated with the larger corpus of NGO-produced materials on traditional agriculture, appropriate technology, and sustainable development (Fig. 8). After more than twenty years of investigation and promotion, waru waru and suka
kollus are now integrated into public school curricula throughout Peru and Bolivia. The attention also inspired investigations of and a greater appreciation for other indigenous technologies and crops.