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The Incas placed great emphasis on storing agricultural products, constructing thousands of storage silos (qullqa or qollqas) in every major center of their empire and along their extensive road system. [9] Hillside placements were used to preserve food in storage by utilizing the natural cool air and wind to ventilate both room and floor areas.
The Inca civilization stretched across many regions on the western coast of South America (specifically Peru), and so there was a great diversity of unique plants and animals used for food. The most important plant staples involved various tubers, roots, and grains; and the most common sources of meat were guinea pigs , llamas , fish, and other ...
These terraces are still used. [8] Incans irrigated their fields with a system of reservoirs and cisterns to collect water, which was then distributed by canals and ditches. [9] However, by the mid-19th century, only 3% of Peru's land was still farmable. It lagged behind many other South American countries in agriculture.
This system of work was organized within the framework of institutionalized reciprocity, the Inca emperor was united by personal relations to the regional rulers. [8] The Inca emperor regularly provided the local rulers with goods, and those partially redistributed those goods to the local people, providing them with housing, food, and clothing.
The road system connected the empire from the Andes mountain in Colombia all through Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, northeastern Argentina, and present-day northern Chile. The Inca roads were used to transport food, goods, people, and armies, while Inca officials frequently relayed messages using the roads across the vast stretches of the Inca Empire.
Industrial crops, especially cotton, rubber, quinine, and tobacco, have become widely grown for non-food purposes. Cotton is common in clothing, rubber has many industrial uses, quinine contributed to the destruction of malaria , and tobacco contributed to many negative health effects.
The Inca even grew specific crops together, to balance out the optimal amount of nutrients for all plants. For example, a planting method is known as "three sisters" incorporated the growth of corn, beans, and squash in the same terrace. [ 10 ]
Inca animal husbandry refers to how in the pre-Hispanic andes, camelids played a truly important role in the economy. In particular, the llama and alpaca—the only camelids domesticated by Andean people— [1] which were raised in large-scale houses and used for different purposes within the production system of the Incas.