Scientists Dismissed his Desert Farming. Now They’re Studying it

On the high, wind-scoured plateaus of northern Arizona, where rainfall is rare, a quiet agricultural miracle has unfolded for over 3,000 years. In a land most would consider uninhabitable, Hopi farmers have coaxed corn, beans, squash, and melons from the earth using no irrigation, no fertilizers, and no modern machinery. Just knowledge—ancient, adaptive, and alive.

Dr. Michael Kotutwa Johnson, a Hopi dryland farmer, professor of Indigenous resilience at the University of Arizona, and a passionate advocate for food sovereignty, stands at the crossroads of past and future. His research, rooted in both science and ceremony, seeks not only to document Indigenous agricultural practices—but to revitalize them. He spoke this week at the National Association for Plant Breeding (NAPB) conference in Kona, Hawai’i.

“I come from a place where we get six to 10 inches of rain a year,” Johnson says. “Yet we’ve been growing crops there for millennia. Without chemicals. Without irrigation. Just by understanding our land and listening to it.”

That knowledge, he explains, isn’t just ecological—it’s spiritual, relational, and deeply cultural.

Behind Johnson’s farm stands a house he built himself from sandstone—the same material a nearby bird used to craft its nest. “I had to ask myself,” he jokes, “who’s teaching who?” The moment encapsulates his belief in observational science, in slowing down and watching what nature reveals.

Above his fields, etched into rock, is a petroglyph that guides much of his thinking. It depicts a farmer, bent with a planting stick, and a line of people holding hands. The path abruptly ends—but connects with another. “That’s us,” Johnson says. “If we hold onto our values—our knowledge—we continue. That rock is our roadmap for survival.”

What Science Still Doesn’t Know

Johnson calls his approach Indigenous Agricultural Knowledge: “Applied knowledge for raising food, grounded in belief systems that have been tested over thousands of years.” Yet, when he worked for the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service, he was told Hopi farming techniques couldn’t be validated—because there were no peer-reviewed studies to support them.

Three thousand years of replication is viewed as being not scientific enough, he says.

He’s working to change that. With collaborators in genomics, Johnson is cataloging the genetics of traditional crops—some from seeds up to 800 years old—to prove what oral tradition already knows: Hopi varieties are uniquely adapted to drought and changing climates.

In one hand, he recently held a tiny cob grown from seeds found in a cave near Lake Powell—seeds untouched since the 13th century. In the other hand, he held hope.

Women as Keepers of the Seed

In Hopi culture, women don’t just plant and harvest—they own the fields. Johnson’s society is matrilineal, and its women are geneticists in their own right.

“They decide which traits to pass on,” he says. “They observe every plant. And we plant every year, drought or not—not to waste seed, but to keep adapting.”

This isn’t just farming. It’s evolutionary stewardship.

Farming, for Johnson, is not about maximizing yield. “People ask if this system is economically efficient. No. But the nutrient density? Off the charts.” In the face of a diabetes epidemic affecting 80% of adults on some Native reservations, he sees traditional food as medicine.

“We live in the richest country in the world,” he says, “but we have some of the poorest people—and the most broken food systems. These seeds can heal that.”

A Future Rooted in the Past

Through his nonprofit and his work with the Indigenous Resilience Center, Johnson is building youth agricultural programs that pair hands-on farming with language revitalization and STEM education.

He’s also forming alliances—like the Pueblo Agricultural Alliance—to push for legal protection of Indigenous seeds under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). These seeds, he argues, are not just heritage—they are patrimony.

“Let our systems prove the science, not the other way around.”

He’s not just advocating for seed banks, but seed homes—repositories on Indigenous land, tied to community benefit-sharing agreements and grown in the soils they evolved from.