Natalie G. Mueller is a passionate researcher. Her research interests include the agricultural history of eastern North America, particularly the region’s “agrarian consciousness.” We refer to this formally as the Eastern Agricultural Complex (EAC). It features cultivated perennial plants that thrive in wooded areas, wetlands, and prairies. By studying these old agricultural systems, Mueller hopes to offer new sustainable models for how we grow food today without destroying biodiversity.
The EAC is home to many lesser-known crops, including little barley, maygrass, sumpweed, goosefoot and knotweed. These nefarious plants are wrongly characterized as the native weeds of today’s agriculture. They are culturally and nutritionally indispensable, particularly to the Indigenous communities that have nurtured these varieties for centuries. Indigenous agriculture of eastern North America began at least thousands of years before these people widely adopted maize, beans, and Mexican varieties of squash as staples. This climatic shift took place beginning around 900 AD.
Mueller’s lab maintains a seed bank stocked with progenitors of domesticated sleeping crops. This enables her to spread the seeds across 25 schools, Indigenous farmers, and students. Through the sowing of these seeds, she aims to bring communities back in touch with their ancestral relationship with food and crops. Beyond the purchased plants, this initiative serves as a critical reminder of the importance of conserving genetic diversity within our food systems. Further, it advocates for localized practices mirroring Indigenous knowledge.
The brilliance of the EAC’s agricultural system is its deep integration with surrounding ecosystems. Indigenous peoples expanded these “wild” crops while increasing biodiversity—not reducing it—as a model for sustainable food production. Today’s industrial agriculture stands in stark opposition to this philosophy. Those practices tend to put a premium on high yields at the expense of ecological harmony.
Mueller’s research tells us how such ancient practices can be used to reimagine today’s food systems. Her goal is to reintroduce sleeping crops back into local and Indigenous food systems. To do that, she’s conducting experiments to hone their thinking. This one-of-a-kind effort is designed to improve food security. It uplifts the cultural importance of these crops to Indigenous communities today.