New Englanders should look to the area’s past for guidance on strengthening local agriculture and fostering nutrition, according to several local farmers and agriculture enthusiasts.

That was one of the main messages of an event called “Farming in Berkley, Past and Present,” which was hosted at Berkley’s Dighton Rock Museum Sunday afternoon. About 30 people attended the event, which featured lectures, delivered by locals, about the farming practices of Native Americans.

“They started farming about 1,000 years ago,” said Jo Anne Miller, of Berkley, who brought a display of Native American tools. “Instead of being wandering and nomadic, they started to grow. One thing that I would imagine back then is the foods were much healthier.”

Miller explained that, back then, naturally grown foods were not grown with pesticides or processed with additives or preservatives. She also said the meats Native Americans ate were not full of antibiotics and steroids, like they are today.

“They still had pestilence and insects but they didn’t have all the chemicals,” Miller said. “Their foods were more natural. They didn’t have sugars and over-processing. I think people, if they have a little space, should try to do a little gardening, even if it’s just a tomato plant.”

Instead of buying produce from a supermarket, people should go to farm stands for their food, according to Miller. Although Miller encouraged attendees to start their own gardens, she joked that she would not want to use the old-fashioned tools of the Wampanoag Tribe, a few of which she found on her property years ago.

Mother-daughter duo Nancy and Angela Possinger both work at Kettle Pond Farm in Berkley, which grows only organic produce at its location on Bayview Avenue. Both took the podium Sunday to explain the genius of Wampanoag agriculture.

Angela, 23, talked about the concept of “Three Sisters,” a Wampanoag term used for growing corn, beans and squash in close proximity.

“They are grown together because they end up mutually benefiting each other,” said Angela, who graduated from Roger Williams University, where she studied biology and chemistry. “Beans — pull beans — grow around the base of the corn and grow up the corn, and are able to convert nitrogen from the atmosphere into nitrogen in the soil. They have these little black nodules on their roots that have bacteria that, in their life process, can convert nitrogen, which is a gas, to nitrate, the form plants can absorb. So the corn, which needs lots of nitrogen, has it put into the soil right below it. The beans put it back in and the corn picks it up.”

All three foods were used in a common Native American dish called Succotash, Angela said.

“It’s also a good dietary combination,” Angela said. “It happens that corn, beans and squash cover all of your essential nutrients in your diet except for some meat products, from which you need B12.  Corn covers carbohydrates, beans have lots of vegetable protein and squash is very high in vitamins, particularly Vitamin A.”

Angela said pairing is used, on a small scale, at Kettle Pond Farm, but it’s part of a larger-scale strategy called companion planting. She cited another example: Potatoes should be grown with beans, because it is believed that beans repel the Colorado potato beetle while potatoes repel the Mexican bean beetle.

She also advised planting buckwheat near tomatoes.

“Buckwheat attracts the tachinid fly, a very small fly that happens to lay its eggs in the big disgusting tomato hornworm,” Angela said. “The tachinid fly lays its eggs in the tomato hornworm, attracted by the buckwheat, and then the eggs hatch and basically kill the worm and spread out and create more tachinid flies to lay more eggs.”

Another speaker, Jacqui Chamberlain, encouraged attendees to support local farms. A Co-owner of  Berkley’s Chamberlain Farm, a 90-acre farm that produces cranberries and butternut squash for wholesale, Chamberlain said shipping in food from all over the world may be cheaper, but it causes more damage to the environment and the local economy.

“We talk about being dependent on foreign oil in this country, but let’s not get there with food,” she said. “Carbon footprints? Well you know what, our squash doesn’t have to come all the way from Mexico. Ours only (goes) from Berkley to Boston. There is a lot less damage to the environment when you buy locally as opposed to shipping it in from all over the world.”

Chamberlain said there are currently 700 farmers in Bristol County.

“It’s really important for people to know about agriculture and where their food comes from,” she said. “Support your local farmers.”