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heard a story on a podcast that some Christian missionaries showed these rural Cambodian farmers how to double their crop yields. the missionaries came back a year later and were surprised the Cambodians had grown basically the same amount of crops but the farmers were like “yeah this is great, we got everything we need for the year and only had to do half as much work”

"Early colonists on Turtle Island were stunned by the plenitude they found here, attributing the richness to the bounty of nature. Settlers in the Great Lakes wrote in their journals about the extraordinary abundance of wild rice harvested by Native peoples; in just a few days, they could fill their canoes with enough rice to last all year. But the settlers were puzzled by the fact that, as one of them wrote, “the savages stopped gathering long before all the rice was harvested.” She observed that “the rice harvest starts with a ceremony of thanksgiving and prayers for good weather for the next four days. They will harvest dawn till dusk for the prescribed four days and then stop, often leaving much rice to stand unreaped. This rice, they say, is not for them but for the Thunders. Nothing will compel them to continue, therefore much goes to waste.” The settlers took this as certain evidence of laziness and lack of industry on the part of the heathens. They did not understand how indigenous land-care practices might contribute to the wealth they encountered. I once met an engineering student visiting from Europe who told me excitedly about going ricing in Minnesota with his friend’s Ojibwe family. He was eager to experience a bit of Native American culture. They were on the lake by dawn and all day long they poled through the rice beds, knocking the ripe seed into the canoe. “It didn’t take long to collect quite a bit,” he reported, “but it’s not very efficient. At least half of the rice just falls in the water and they didn’t seem to care. It’s wasted.” As a gesture of thanks to his hosts, a traditional ricing family, he offered to design a grain capture system that could be attached to the gunwales of their canoes. He sketched it out for them, showing how his technique could get 85 percent more rice. His hosts listened respectfully, then said, “Yes, we could get more that way. But it’s got to seed itself for next year. And what we leave behind is not wasted. You know, we’re not the only ones who like rice. Do you think the ducks would stop here if we took it all?” Our teachings tell us to never take more than half."

There are So Many Journals from American colonists that describe the amazing bounty of the land, and then surprise surprise, once they drive away the people who were caring for the land and make the farming "more efficient" and kill all the predators and import domesticated animals and everything, the amazing miraculous bounty starts drying up.

Talking of colourful medievalisms, have you seen the digital reconstructions of the wall paintings in the medieval chapel in Chester Castle? They're so colourful: https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/chester-castle-agricola-tower-and-castle-walls/history/wall-paintings/ Need more of this kind of set designs in medieval films.

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100 years ago: