SFI External Professor Steve Lansing used computer simulations to show that traditional Balinese agricultural practices -- intertwined with religious tradition, ecological knowledge, and egalitarian water distribution agreements -- had been optimized over thousands of years of "evolution."
Lansing has studied Bali's cooperative farming systems, known as subaks, since the 1970s. His modeling helped restore the Balinese subaks to their pre-Green Revolution conditions and helped gain the subaks recognition as a UNESCO World Heritage site.
Read the article in ScienceLive (June 9, 2014)
Read the more detailed article in the SFI Update newsletter (September-October 2012)