qtjiroga: a Mexican Mxnsricrpio — brand 



J8X 



care of the deficits in nitrogen and potassium, and 

 the calcium lack is not marked. If the soils are 

 kept up they are appropriate for the principal 

 crops now raised in the area. The basic difficul- 

 ties are a lack of sufficient soil (in depth and in 

 area) and insufficiency of water, and both of these 

 conditions are due chiefly to the cutting of timber 

 and clearing of fields on the upper slopes. With 

 much of the vegetative cover gone the waters of 

 the rainy season are not held back and absorbed, 

 and the accelerated run-off keeps adding to the 

 area of gulhed and denuded slopes. A number of 

 preventive and corrective measm^es are possible. 

 Cutting of trees, pasturing, and cropping on the 

 upper slopes should be discontinued. The value 

 of the wood, pasture, and crops obtained from 

 these submarginal lands is quite small. The 

 people who formerly made a livehhood in those 

 areas could be put to work by the State planting 

 wood lots of eucalyptus (which does quite well in 

 the area) to provide fire and post wood, building 

 check dams at the heads of the gullies, and plant- 

 ing cover crops on the nearly denuded slopes. 

 Several tropical forms of drought-resistant Les- 

 pedeza and kudzu (Pueraria) have been developed 

 which cover the ground completely within a few 

 months, and which provide not only soil cover 

 but also forage and hay, and they enrich the soil 

 with nitrogen. Other legumes which provide 

 cover, forage, and nitrification of the soil are certain 

 clovers, Crotalaria, lupines, and the vetches. All 

 of these should do well in the area since there are 

 numerous closely related wild forms. Temporary 

 relief from the water shortage can be obtained by 

 placing a number of windmills over shallow wells 

 along the lake margin, and pumping the lake 

 water (through a series of windmill-powered lifts) 

 into reservoirs in the canyons above Quiroga 

 whence the water could be led by gravity canals 

 to the majority of the fields around Quiroga. So 

 long as the soils are shallow it would be a mistake 

 to alter the present method of shallow plowing 

 with wooden plows, but plowing should be dis- 

 continued completely on the slopes since even 

 contour plowing is not sufficient to prevent wash. 

 The ideal situation would be to have every indi- 

 vidual field tested as to the chemical content of the 

 soil before prescribing the proper fertilizers. Such 

 crops as soybeans and sorghums probably would 

 produce well in the area, and there is great need 

 for improving the strains of maize, wheat, and 



beans. Drastic remedies are indicated for the sick 

 soil and agriculture of the region. From colonial 

 times to the present there has been a steady dechne 

 in soil fertihty, and just since the 1880's the Quir- 

 oga area has lost about 30 percent of its produc- 

 tive capacity (comparing yields of maize and 

 wheat per unit quantity planted). 



FIELD CROPS 



Everybody agrees that the chief field crops, in 

 order of acreage planted, are maize, wheat, habas, 

 beans, followed by either barley or cucurbits, and 

 alfalfa. However, there is absolutely no agree- 

 ment as to what the actual acreages are nor what 

 the average annual production of any crop may 

 be. We have already outlined the methods of 

 land description, and it is obvious that in most 

 cases the people honestly do not know how much 

 land they own or cultivate in terms of hectares or 

 other units of the land itself. They are accus- 

 tomed to measuring the land indirectly in terms 

 of how much seed is planted. Consequently we 

 have long lists of how many hters of maize, wheat, 

 and other crops were planted, but very little cer- 

 tain information as to the areas involved. It is 

 not possible to convert hters of maize, for example, 

 into the number of hectares planted in the Quiroga 

 area since the amount planted per unit of area 

 varies greatly with the location and richness 

 of the soil. We have determined some approxi- 

 mate means for statistical purposes, but they are 

 nothing more than approximations which may be 

 as much as 20 percent off in either direction. 

 Production is often stated in terms of returns per 

 unit planted; e. g., 30 for 1, which may be 30 liters 

 for 1 liter or 3Qfanegas for Ifanega. The difficulty 

 in this case is that the yields or returns vary tre- 

 mendously from one year to another and from one 

 field to another. Even when we obtained a total 

 figure for some person's harvest the figure would 

 be rendered suspect either by our own observa- 

 tions or by checking with neighbors and merchants 

 to whom the crop was sold. There is a deep- 

 seated reluctance to let any outsider know the 

 true amount of production or income which stems 

 from generations of sad experiences with tax 

 collectors, the collectors of the church's tithes (no 

 longer legal), revolutionaries in need of supphes, 

 and others of similar ilk. To further complicate 

 the picture of acreages and productions are the 

 various sequences of crop rotation and fallow which 



835847—50 



-10 



