Contemporary Agricultural Patterns in a Mountain Pima Village

The Mountain Pima of the village of Nabogame, Chihuahua, Mexico, cultivate maize, beans, squash, potatoes, peaches, chayote, and other crops. Their diet is supplemented with hunting, fishing, and collection of a variety of wild edible plants, as well as with meat, cheese, and eggs. The people utilize a combination of permanent, fallowed, and temporary fields for planting. Manuring of permanent fields involves the periodic movement of goat corrals to different locations. Erosion control includes building of dikes, stone dams, and trenches to control water movement. As a response to growing population in recent decades, the people have adopted swidden agriculture involving the felling of climax forest on very steep hillsides. This, coupled with increased grazing pressure threatens to have long-term adverse impacts on the local environment.