Hopi farmers have grown maize in northern Arizona on roughly 250 millimetres of rain a year with no irrigation at all, by planting seed up to 30 centimetres deep to reach stored moisture. The varieties they use have been selected for that depth over centuries and won’t germinate the same way anywhere else.

A crop can thrive on a quarter of the water conventional farming demands—if you've spent two millennia breeding it to. The post Hopi farmers have grown maize in northern Arizona on roughly 250 millimetres of rain a year with no irrigation at all, by planting seed up to 30 centimetres deep to reach stored moisture. The varieties they use have been selected for that depth over centuries and won’t germinate the same way anywhere else. appeared first on Space Daily .