People in the Mountains - Mountain Geography: Physical and Human Dimensions - page 511

tions. Maize, introduced to East and South Asia in the sixteenth century, has spread far
and wide in the Hindu Kush-Karakoram-Himalaya, providing a nutritionally superior hu-
man and animal food product at higher altitudes than endemic food plants, such as mil-
let. Maize accompanied the expansion of Han Chinese populations into the mountains of
southwest China in the eighteenth century, extending cropland into previously forested
areas, onto steeper slopes, and to higher altitudes, thus supporting further growth and
expansion of local and immigrant populations. The introduction of maize and tea into
the Indian and Nepal Himalaya in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries had similar
effects (Subba 1989).
The advent of rapid and reliable transport in mountain areas has led to a widespread
introduction of food plants that have thrived in the diversity of mountain microenviron-
ments. Introduced as cash crops for distant markets, they have generated new income
sources, entered local markets, and altered the diets of mountain people (Fig. 10.14).
Carrots, cauliflower, cabbage, broccoli, beans, peas, garlic, grapes, apples, and other
hard fruits are common cash crops throughout the mountain world, from India and Ch-
ina to East Africa to the Americas, Europe, and New Zealand. In the Kullu Valley of
Himachal Pradesh, on the slopes of Mount Kenya, and in the mountains of Yunnan there
are thriving cut-flower and decorative nursery plant businesses. Thus, the natural ecolo-
gical and environmental diversity of mountain environments that provided the ecologic-
al complementarity so important for subsistence of mountain people is today the basis
for a commercial diversity that brings benefits to far wider populations.