Inca Food, Agriculture and Cuisine

The agriculture and cuisine of the Inca state sustained a population of perhaps ten million people in the Andean region between the reign of Pachacuti (c. 1438) and the Spanish conquest of 1532, producing a food surplus that underwrote the empire’s armies, its qollqa storage network, and its ritual feasting cycle. Andean farmers practiced a sophisticated system of vertical archipelago cultivation, in which a single ayllu would maintain plots at several different altitudes — from the maize belts at 3,000 meters up to the potato and oca (Oxalis tuberosa) belts above 4,000 meters — and exchange the produce of one altitude for that of another through state stores, kin networks, and market trueque. The state expanded and formalized this system through the construction of terraces (andenes), the waru waru raised fields of the altiplano, and an extensive network of irrigation canals. The principal crops were the potato, the maize, and quinoa, supplemented by a remarkable range of tubers, grains, legumes, and fruits, and by the meat of camelids and cuy (guinea pig). The story of how the Incas fed themselves, in a high-altitude environment that often defeated European-introduced crops, is one of the most remarkable chapters in the pre-industrial history of food.

The Andean environment and the limits of cultivation

The Andean highlands presented a set of agricultural challenges that the Incas met with characteristic ingenuity. The growing season at 4,000 meters is short — typically 120 to 150 frost-free days — and the daily temperature range can exceed 25 °C, with night frosts possible in every month. Rainfall is highly seasonal, concentrated in the December-to-March wet season, and the altiplano above 3,800 m is semi-arid. Soils are often thin and stony, subject to erosion on slopes that may exceed 30 degrees. The early Spanish chroniclers, accustomed to the agriculture of Mediterranean Spain, were uniformly astonished at the productivity of Andean terracing. The chronicler Pedro Cieza de León recorded that the maize fields of the Chinchaysuyu yielded two harvests a year.

The Incas dealt with these constraints by combining complementary techniques. They selected frost-resistant varieties of maize, potato, and quinoa from the existing Andean gene pool. They terraced steep hillsides to control erosion and to create microclimates in which temperature and soil moisture could be regulated. They built irrigation canals that brought water from glacial sources to fields many kilometers away. And they practiced a complex system of crop rotation and fallow that maintained soil fertility over centuries, as the agricultural terraces of Pisac, Ollantaytambo, and the Sacred Valley demonstrate to the present day.

Terraces, raised fields, and irrigation

The terracing systems of the Inca state are among the most impressive agricultural monuments of the pre-industrial world. The terraces at Pisac, for example, comprise a series of twenty or more concentric levels cut into the hillside above the town, with retaining walls of fitted stone, a layer of large stones for drainage, and a topsoil layer of fine alluvium. The terraces were irrigated by a canal that brought water from a stream higher up the slope, and they produced maize on the lower levels and potatoes on the upper levels, with a vertical separation of perhaps 400 meters. The terraces have been dated by archaeological excavation to the reign of Pachacuti in the mid-15th century, and they have been continuously maintained by the local ayllu in the centuries since the conquest.

A more spectacular terracing complex is found at Ollantaytambo, where the Inca emperor built a series of fortress-terraces on the hillside above the town to defend the approach to the Sacred Valley. The terraces, which include some of the largest single blocks ever moved by the Incas, are not strictly agricultural — their primary function was defensive — but they illustrate the engineering principles that the Incas applied to agriculture more generally. The hydraulic engineering of the Inca state is treated in detail in Inca hydraulic engineering; the state maintained thousands of kilometers of irrigation canals, some of which (such as the canal at Cumbemayo near Cusco) were cut through living rock.

A distinct agricultural technology of the altiplano was the waru waru raised field. The waru waru consisted of an elevated planting platform, typically 10 to 20 meters wide and 50 to 100 meters long, surrounded by canals of water that absorbed solar heat by day and released it by night, raising the night temperature of the platform by several degrees Celsius. The system, which had been used in the Lake Titicaca basin since at least the Formative period (c. 1000 BC), was greatly expanded by the Inca state in the 15th century, and the raised fields around the lake were estimated by the Proyecto Especial del Lago Titicaca in the 1990s to cover an area of perhaps 80,000 hectares. The ethnographer Clark Erickson has argued that the waru waru yielded as much as 10 metric tons of potatoes per hectare per year, making it among the most productive agricultural technologies in the pre-industrial world.

The potato

The potato (Solanum tuberosum) was the staple food of the highland Andes. The Incas cultivated thousands of distinct varieties, distinguished by the chronicler Cieza de León into some forty principal types and by the colonial administrator Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala into a much more elaborate classification. Potatoes were grown at altitudes from 2,500 to 4,500 meters, with the highest-quality varieties cultivated above 3,800 m; the bitter varieties, which contain toxic glycoalkaloids, were reserved for the production of chuño — freeze-dried potatoes that could be stored for years without spoilage. Chuño was the principal form in which potatoes were stored in the state qollqas and in household trojes, and was the principal food distributed as famine relief and as military rations. The detailed treatment is given in Potatoes in the Inca diet: varieties, chuño, and storage.

The introduction of the potato to Europe after the conquest had a transformative effect on global food systems. The Spanish brought the first potatoes back to Spain around 1570, and from Spain the crop spread to Italy, the Low Countries, and the German-speaking lands over the next century. By the late 18th century the potato had become a staple of the Irish diet, and the failure of the potato crop in 1845–1846 — the Great Famine — caused the death of perhaps a million people and the emigration of another million. The potato was thus a global inheritance from Inca agriculture.

Maize

Maize (Zea mays) was the prestige crop of the Inca state. Although it was less productive per unit of land than the potato, it was central to religious ritual: a jar of maize beer (chicha) was poured at every shrine, at every sacrifice, and at every important social interaction. The chronicler Garcilaso de la Vega, who grew up in Cusco in the mid-16th century, recorded that maize was offered to Inti, the sun god, at the Coricancha every morning before sunrise. Maize was also the staple of feasting at Inti Raymi and other major festivals, and the distribution of maize from the state qollqas to the population of Cusco was one of the principal functions of the imperial economy.

The Incas distinguished some fifty or more varieties of maize, classified by color, by the size of the cob, and by the altitude at which they would mature. The most prestigious varieties were the q’ello sara (yellow maize), the yuraj sara (white maize), and the yana sara (black or dark purple maize); the last was reserved for the Sapa Inca and for the Temple of the Sun. The detailed treatment of maize varieties, terracing, and storage is given in Maize in Inca agriculture: terraces, ritual, and storage.

Quinoa and the highland grain crops

Quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa) was the second great grain crop of the Andean highlands, and one of the most nutritionally valuable. Quinoa seed contains roughly 16 percent protein, with an essential amino acid balance that is unusually complete for a plant food, and it was used as a high-protein supplement to the potato- and maize-based diet, particularly in the lean winter months before the harvest. The Incas cultivated many varieties of quinoa, distinguished by the chroniclers into sweet varieties (grown for their seed) and bitter varieties (grown for their leaves); the bitter varieties were processed by washing in water to remove the saponins that coat the seeds. The detailed treatment of quinoa and the related Andean highland crops is given in Quinoa and Andean highland crops.

A related group of highland crops includes kiwicha (Amaranthus caudatus), kañiwa (Chenopodium pallidicaule), and tarwi (Lupinus mutabilis). Kiwicha and kañiwa are small-seeded grains closely related to quinoa, with a similarly high protein content; they were grown at altitudes above 3,800 m, where maize and potatoes grew poorly. Tarwi, the Andean lupin, is a high-protein legume that was used both as food and as a soil-improving crop in rotation with potatoes. The Incas practiced a system of crop rotation that alternated potatoes, quinoa, and tarwi on the same plot over a period of seven to ten years, supporting continuous cultivation without fallow.

Coca, ají, and the flavoring crops

Beyond the principal staples, the Incas cultivated a range of secondary crops of considerable economic and ritual importance. Coca (Erythroxylum coca) was the most prestigious of these. The leaf, which contains the mild stimulant cocaine, was chewed with a small quantity of lime or llipta as a stimulant, as a digestive aid, and as a sacred offering to the huacas. The Incas restricted coca cultivation to designated cocaleras in the eastern Andean valleys — particularly the tropical valleys of the Antisuyu. The Spanish initially attempted to prohibit coca use on the grounds that it was idolatrous, but they reversed the prohibition in the 1560s when it became clear that the Andean labor force could not function without it.

Ají (Capsicum baccatum and related species) was the principal flavoring crop of the Andean diet. The Incas distinguished a number of varieties, including the yellow ají amarillo and the small red ají panca, both of which are still widely used in modern Andean cuisine. Tomatoes, peanuts, and several kinds of beans were also cultivated, often in the warm valleys below 2,500 m. The fruits of the highland — particularly the tumbo (Passiflora mollissima), the chirimoya (Annona cherimola), and the capulí (Prunus serotina) — were gathered rather than cultivated, but they were an important supplement to the diet, particularly of the elite.

The daily diet and the food economy

The daily diet of the hatun runa was based on chuño and a handful of steamed or boiled root vegetables, supplemented by maize at festival time and by the meat of camelids, cuy, and freshwater or marine fish. The state allocated meat from its herds of llamas and alpacas according to the mit’a obligation of each household. The food economy of the empire was a redistributive system in which food flowed from producers to state stores and from those stores to soldiers, priests, and ritual specialists; the chronicler Cieza de León recorded that the state qollqas of Huánuco Pampa held an estimated 30,000 to 40,000 tons of maize and chuño at any one time.

Famine relief was an important function of state storage. The Incas, recognizing the periodic failure of the papa or sara crops in the altiplano, maintained a substantial reserve of chuño and quinoa in the qollqas of the major provincial centers, and they distributed food to communities in distress. The chronicler Pedro Pizarro recorded that the state sent food caravans of up to 4,000 llamas to communities hit by drought or frost, and that the curaca of the affected ayllu was required to provide labor in exchange. The agricultural historian John Murra has argued that this system of famine relief was one of the principal mechanisms by which the Inca state secured the loyalty of its subjects in the highland provinces, and a direct model for the Spanish repartimiento system that succeeded it.

The ritual and feasting cycle

Food was central to the ritual and feasting cycle of the Inca state. The Inti Raymi, the great feast of the sun celebrated at the winter solstice in late June, was the most elaborate of the state feasts, with the distribution of chicha and roasted cuy to the population of Cusco and to visiting panacas and curacas from across the empire. The Capac Raymi in late December marked the initiation of noble youth into adulthood and was marked by feasting and the pouring of chicha. The Qhapaq Raymi in the months before the solstice was a state ritual of purification of the Sapa Inca and his court. The Pachamama Raymi in August honored the earth mother with offerings of chuño and chicha; the Situa Raymi in September drove out the sicknesses of the past year with ritual meals. The food and drink consumed at these festivals — and the textiles given as gifts — were the principal mechanism by which the state circulated its surplus and bound its subjects to the imperial order.

A central culinary institution of the empire was the aclla wasi — a “house of the chosen” where young women of proven lineage were prepared for service. The senior acllas were given in marriage by the Sapa Inca to nobles and officials he wished to reward; the Yurac aclla (white chosen) and Pacaric aclla served the Temple of the Sun in Cusco and in provincial shrines. The acllas were also responsible for the preparation of ritual foods and for the brewing of the highest-quality chicha for state feasts.

Food and agriculture after the conquest

The Spanish conquest of 1532 and the subsequent introduction of European crops and animals transformed Andean agriculture and cuisine. The Spanish brought wheat, barley, oats, chickpeas, and broad beans; they introduced cattle, sheep, goats, horses, and pigs; and they introduced sugar cane, plantains, and a range of European fruits. The principal effect of the conquest on Andean agriculture was the reorganization of land tenure: the Spanish established the encomienda and later the repartimiento and the haciendas, which gradually concentrated land in the hands of a small Spanish and mestizo elite. The mit’a labor obligation was preserved in modified form under the repartimiento system, and the state qollqas were taken over by the colonial administration.