would force them to deny
that land to their borrow-
ing friends in the future.
Few farmers build terraces
on tributary land for simi-
lar reasons. Most of these
relationships concern
men, and the farmer can
negotiate to plant perma-
nent crops such as coffee.
Although annual payments
of tribute (in beer, crops, and increasingly
cash) theoretically secure all rights in land
for the tribute giver, the government’s pop-
ulist land policies – which enhanced the
principle that current use confers land rights- has shrunk the social distance of these
contracts to close kinsmen in the past few
decades. Even those with secure tribute
relationships do not want to build terraces
on this land, however, because few
landowners (many of whom are absentee
city-dwellers) still allow tributary relation-
ships to be inherited. A terrace-building trib-
ute payer would therefore get increased
short-term yields without long-term security.
Although clan land ownership is relatively
secure in North Pare, terracing is still not
easy because the division of labor by gender
makes it unpopular with women. Women
fear that if they terrace the clan land that
they cultivate, their husbands will capture
the benefits and leave them to increase pro-
duction on less fertile land or face food
shortages, as this quotation from an elderly
female farmer indicates:
“If a woman builds terraces, what happens
to the land? She has to give the terraced
farm to a man, who will grow fodder, trees,
or vegetables. Women with strength build
terraces and give them to their husbands.
Men have more skill with cash crops.”Overall, then, planners’ efforts to enhance
household food security threatened the
social relationships upon which it depends.^15The third problem with terracing in NorthPare was moral disorder. The potential loss
of permanent crops, skepticism about the
longevity of policy, and the disruption of
existing social relationships in land all pre-
vented the terraces from being recognised
as morally proper, a condition which many
people in North Pare label ‘cool.’ For exam-
ple, farmers say that a plot of land acquired
by force or deception will only bear poor
harvests because of its lack of ‘coolness.’
Even a technical matter such as measuring
terraces has a moral dimension, because
quantification disrupts
the moral order that
makes assets produc-
tive. When TFAP con-
ducted a socioeco-
nomic survey in 1994,
researchers found that
many farmers refused
to have their fields
surveyed because they
believed that “things
counted or measured
get damaged soon after.”^16 The same cultur-
al logic applies to terraces and increases
farmers’ doubts about the return on their
labor investment. This is also why some
farmers say that the new terraces are not
peaceful because they accentuate the social
differentiation that has already resulted from
decades of socio-economic change:“These days the government and the donors
are bringing war and rivalry to the land
because they are making everyone build ter-
races, and that’s just going to create divi-
sions between those with labor and those
without.”Opposition to terrace construction was
therefore not simply because of misunder-
standing (the reason cited by development
agency extensionists), laziness and igno-
rance (the reasons cited by government offi-
cials), or North Pare’s labor shortage (the
reason often cited by area farmers).^17 It
combined profound doubt about the agro-
ecological continuity of individual farms, theHistory, cculture aand cconservation
Women ffear tthat iif
they tterrace tthe cclan
land tthat tthey cculti-
vate, ttheir hhusbands
will ccapture tthe bbene-
fits aand lleave tthem tto
increase pproduction
on lless ffertile lland oor
face ffood sshortages
Opposition tto tterrace ccon-
struction... ccombined
profound ddoubt aabout tthe
agro-eecological ccontinu-
ity oof iindividual ffarms,
the ssocial ccontinuity oof
local rrelationships iin
land, aand tthe mmoral ccon-
tinuity oof ssociety iitself.