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mayans also grew beans, squash, avocados, pears, sweet potato's, guava, chili peppers, papayas and tomatoes. Mayans used a farming technique called milpa,also known as the slash and burn technique.the Mayans would burn down the land that was covered and the cut down the remaining foliage. This technique posed a problem because the land wouldn't last very long. The Mayans cycled through different areas to keep a stable farming.
The Maya were skillful farmers. They used their knowledge of calendars and seasons to grow crops. In the beginning, they grew more food than they needed. City-states did trade some surplus food for other items. But most of the surplus food was stored by each city-state to feed anyone who needed it in that city-state. As the population grew, farmers found it ever more difficult to grow enough food to feed the growing population. Farming was difficult in the Maya region. There were dense forests, little surface water such as rivers and lakes, and the soil was poor. But the Maya were clever. The Maya did not try to use one system of agriculture. The farmers in each city-state fit their system to the land. In the mountainous highlands, they used step farming, so that each step would be flat and able to be irrigated to better grow and harvest crops.