eral years, and where else can we go to
grow food?”
Terracing has high short-term labor costs,
even after construction is complete. Given
that terracing two acres would, on average,
take one person 66 eight-hour days,^11 most
farmers simply do not have the time and
endurance the task requires. Furthermore,
terracing is highly seasonal because it can
only be done after harvesting and before
planting, so it coincides with the seasons of
peak labor demand (in September/October
and January/February).
To overcome these technical obstacles,
TFAP brought considerable political pressure
to bear on North Pare farmers. Most impor-
tantly, the area’s Member of Parliament
declared that he wanted all highlands farms
terraced as quickly as possible.
Administrative officials often cited this infor-
mal declaration and give it the force of law
by saying that terracing “is a government
order” (ni amri ya serikali). In local meet-
ings these officials made it clear that the
office tenure of village leaders was depend-
ent on building terraces on their lands.
Officials justify this coercion by manipulating
the discourse of participatory development
espoused by TFAP. At one meeting that I
attended, an administrative officer was
pressing village leaders to set a date for an
agricultural extensionist to measure their
farms (which would then formally commit
them to terracing before planting). This
made the village leaders very anxious, and
one village chairman said that few of them
had the resources or ability to build so
many terraces. The officer responded that
“the government is facilitating agricultural
development, even in difficult areas like [the
chairman’s village], so the government is
making you village leaders into facilitators
for your neighbors’ benefit.”^12 While the
local government used the stick, TFAP
offered the carrot. TFAP supplied tree
seedlings and provided tools for terrace-
building work groups. With these pressures
and incentives, North Pare farmers terraced
approximately 40 hectares of land annually
throughout the 1990s. Crop yields increased
and many farmers shifted to higher-value
crops on terraced land.
They did not, however, do this work without
serious misgivings because terrace con-
struction threatened the existing economic,
social, and moral order. At the core of the
dilemma were ambiguities over the impor-
tance of terraced land, the status of perma-
nent crops, and the status of the terraces
themselves. Many highland families rely
more on their lowland plots for food than
the highland areas to be terraced, and this
drained the urgency out of
TFAP’s message. Men feared
that they would have to
uproot coffee trees and
women worried that they
would have to uproot
banana plants. Farmers got
little solace when they voiced
these worries in committee
meetings because agency and government
extensionists, not farmers, made decisions
about terrace construction, as this exchange
in a planning meeting indicates:
Male farmer:I planted my coffee trees in a
zigzag pattern, so how will terraces affect
them? I see that my coffee is already pro-
ducing and giving me enough of a harvest.
So do I have to cut them to build terraces
and then plant coffee all over again?
TFAP facilitator: We will bring agricultural
experts.
This was a double-edged promise because
although the experts’ involvement ensured
well-engineered terraces, the policy
increased the farmers’ insecurity. The farm-
ers of North Pare had seen more than four
decades of shifting land use policies, and
they had little faith that the TFAP terracing
campaign would be the last, as this quota-
History, cculture aand cconservation
Terrace cconstruc-
tion tthreatened tthe
existing eeconomic,
social, aand
moral oorder
