Crystal Bowne, Back-to-the-Land Ozarker Gardens, Newton County, Arkansas, 2010. Taking form in cultivated fields and gardens, managed hedgerows and woodlands, varieties of crop species, and livestock breeds, agricultural biodiversity refers to the human-modified components of the natural world that contribute to the sustenance of human populations. Traditional subsistence systems frequently rely on multiple levels of agricultural biodiversity to ensure sufficient food. Such agrobiodiverse subsistence strategies occur most often in marginal landscapes, where large-scale intensive agriculture systems cannot succeed. The Ozark Highlands’ karst topography precludes most forms of intensive industrial agriculture. While the region has advanced technologically, the Ozarks remain a haven for agrobiodiverse farmers and gardeners. Five years of applied agricultural anthropology research in different locales of the Arkansas and Missouri Ozarks reveals three clearly interconnected characteristics integral to traditional subsistence in the region: agroecological knowledge, diversity, and frugality. These values allowed Ozarkers of historical times to survive, and they permit contemporary hill dwellers an alternative to the industrial food system. Highlighting the practices of Willodean Smyth, a traditional Ozark farmer/gardener, this essay uses archival and ethnographic research to discuss the interrelationships between agricultural biodiversity and subsistence patterns in the past and present.
