Lt. Col. Delgadillo and his fava bean plants. (Photo: Roger Hamilton, IDB)

By ROGER HAMILTON, near Warisata, Bolivia

Lieutenant colonel José Delgadillo is proud of his heavy turnips. He feels the same about his blue-ribbon fava beans, growing taller than a man’s head, or his juicy, thick-leafed onions. His potatoes prosper with such abandon that they seem to burst from the earth.

But most of all, the comandante of the Eighth Infantry Battalion Ayacucho loves to show visitors the ingenious technology he and his men use to produce such an agricultural bounty.

Delgadillo’s garrison can be found a two-hour drive north of La Paz, Bolivia, on a featureless plain bordering the 3,810-meter- high Lake Titicaca. On one side of the highway sits a cluster of orderly, army-issue buildings, but on the other, workers tend a lattice of water-filled ditches alternating with earth mounds, some covered with crops, others picked bare.

Most army installations are strictly off limits to drop-in visitors. But in no time Delgadillo had mobilized a group of soldiers in smartly pressed camouflage and shiny boots to lead a tour. Leaping over ditches of murky (albeit biologically rich) water, Delgadillo explained the remarkable system of precisely engineered trenches and raised beds that researchers, with the help of collaborators like himself, are resurrecting from a distant past.

Men of the Eighth Infantry Battalion show off the fruits of their labor and the ingenuity of their ancestors. (Photo: Roger Hamilton, IDB)

The technique, called suka collo in the Aymara language spoken here, and waru waru in Quechua, was developed by the pre-Columbian inhabitants of the Lake Titicaca area at least 3,000 years ago. But the technique was inexplicably abandoned around 1400 A.D., before the arrival of the Spanish. At one time, suka collos covered some 82,000 hectares of low-lying land around Lake Titicaca, both in Bolivia and Peru. Their remains can be seen from the air as corduroy patterns on expanses of flat land.

A familiar part of the landscape for centuries, the odd topographical feature was considered by local inhabitants as a sign left by an ancient pre-Inca race. But in the 1960s, archeologists discovered the mounds’ true significance, and since then, local and foreign researchers have carried out detailed studies of the sites, calculating their dimensions and analyzing soil and ancient pollen samples.

In a further step, experimental archeologists have taken a page out of Jurassic Park and brought the extinct technology back to life. They constructed plots according to ancient specifications, and recreated what they surmised to be ancient agricultural methods.

Hand-drawn posters teach recruits how to build suka collos for the best results. (Photo: Roger Hamilton, IDB)

The results were remarkable: Without the aid of agrochemicals or modern machinery, the plots outyielded conventional modern agriculture. In one case potato yields from unfertilized suka collos averaged 10 metric tons per hectare, compared with one to four metric tons on nearby fertilized fields.

Rather than relying on hightech inputs, the ancient Green Revolutionists used engineering skills to create a microclimate that protects crops against the bitter cold of this harsh elevation. Able to produce year-round, suka collo-grown crops are affected far less by drought and flooding than their counterparts in conventional fields. As an added bonus, the nutrient-rich mud that forms on the bottom of the trenches is spread on the beds as a natural fertilizer.

Such results are bound to attract attention, and private groups and international organizations are taking steps to put the new-old technology into practice. One such group is the Lima-based International Potato Center, a recipient of IDB financing. The center is looking at how the suka collo system can boost crop yields in such climatically stressed parts of the world as the Himalayas and the mountains of East Africa.

The five hectares under the care of the Eighth Infantry Battalion serve multiple purposes. The crops feed the men on the base, and at the same time the plots are used for research by national and overseas researchers. In addition, the project serves as a classroom for the recruits who, according to Delgadillo, “learn best when things enter through their eyes.” About a quarter of them start community-based suka collo projects after they return home, he said.

Making the suka collos is the easy part, explained Delgadillo. The men merely dig trenches one meter deep and two meters wide, leaving four meters of raised bed in between. These dimensions, which were arrived at through careful research under controlled conditions, turned out to be the same used by pre-Columbian farmers.

The more difficult part is identifying the proper soils for locating suka collos and maintaining the correct level of water in the trenches to produce the ideal microclimate. According to satellite imaging, an estimated 30,000 hectares around Lake Titicaca have the right conditions.

Suka collos aside, Delgadillo’s men are first and foremost soldiers, and spend 60 percent of their time learning military skills. But the remainder of their time is spent tending their plantings, receiving other agricultural training, and learning to read and write. Delgadillo has also organized them into an ecological company that restores degraded land and carries out reforestation with the native kiswara tree. In a country like Bolivia, military service often plays an important social and educational role, giving poor, rural, often illiterate youths an opportunity to expand their horizons, he said.