The future of terrace farming in Yemen: A development dilemma

Daniel Varisco

Agriculture and Human Values, 1991, vol. 8, issue 1, 166-172

Abstract: The country of Yemen, on the southwestern corner of the Arabian Peninsula, is one of the most extensively terraced areas in the world. There is a well-documented tradition of both dryland and irrigated farming over the past three millennia and much of the indigenous agricultural knowledge survives. Development efforts over the past two decades in the north of Yemen have focused on expansion of tubewell irrigation at the expense of the major land use on dryland terraces and traditional subsistence crops. Despite millions of dollars in aid, Yemen is far from agriculturally self-sufficient and its scarce water resource is rapidly being depleted. This articles explores the relevance of indigenous Yemeni knowledge of agriculture and the environment for the future of terrace farming in the country. It is argued that farmer knowledge can contribute to sustainable production and can be grafted on to modern methods and technology. Within Yemen the existing community support networks and pride in national heritage would assist in a reinvestment effort for the existing resource of the terraces. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 1991

Date: 1991
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/BF01579671 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:agrhuv:v:8:y:1991:i:1:p:166-172

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/10460

DOI: 10.1007/BF01579671

Access Statistics for this article

Agriculture and Human Values is currently edited by Harvey S. James Jr.

More articles in Agriculture and Human Values from Springer, The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().