Ethiopian Review

B. Mezgebu
Addis Abeba (All Africa)— Or let me put it this way, what do the people of Japan and the Konso community have in common? Conservation terraces. The Konso people build terraces to grow, sorghum; the Japanese, rice. It has to be said though the similarity between the two ends there. It might be far easier to recount the differences between the two than what makes them similar.

It has been decades now since the name Konso had become synonymous with conservation terraces in Ethiopia. Konso is found in the south of the country as we know. Farming in the area has been known to go hand in hand with terraces. Konso has a semi- arid climate. More importantly rainfall there is so marginal that for most crops its climate constitutes an almost chronic drought.

So perhaps because of that, the ancestors of present day Konso farmers came up with a pragmatic solution at certain point in their long history: Conservation terraces to catch every single drop of rain that falls on the steep terrain. It is often pointed out by the experts that, the key to the survival of farming, as we know it today in Konso’s harsh environment have been the terraces. The people use several indigenous moisture-conservation measures as well, which they had honed over the centuries, but the terraced system is the core.

The terraced conservation system in Konso has over the years been renowned outside the country as well, that it has even been a recipient of a few conservation awards internationally. Scores of agricultural agents from all over the country have been given the chance to visit terraces in Konso firsthand and the experience from that must have been quite an inspiration to many of them.

In Japan, the terraces serve a similar purpose, which is to hold water. Only that the terraces in Japan are for rice paddies and they hold pools of water, quite natural in a region where the rainfall is on the heavy side. Japan being what it is (second richest), the farm terraces were never an economic lifeline to their cultivators as that in Konso.

Especially in modern times, agriculture in Japan, had begun to produce surplus rice overall and the terraced system began to be threatened, what with the young people decamping. But the Japanese society did not allow that to happen. LEISA magazine of March 2009, put it in this manner: “People compare the grandeur of the rice terraces in Japan to the Pyramids in Egypt. Rice terraces, however, are alive with farmers, crops, cultures, and rituals which are handed over and evolving from generation to generation. They are not simply a tourist attraction or device for producing rice. Rice terraces make people aware of their relationship with their ancestors, families, colleagues and nature…So when the Japanese people realized they were losing a valuable natural and cultural resources , farmers gained support of the local and national governments in a joint effort to preserve the rice terrace as their spiritual home”.

So although agriculture in Japan can make do without the rice from the terraced rice fields, (unlike that of Konso), Japan chose subsidizing the farmers there, rather than see those terraces vanish.

Many parts of the Ethiopian highlands are exposed to soil erosion by water runoff due to the steep terrain of the land. They are not only steep but also are situated in low rainfall areas that they need some mechanism to conserve the moisture and save the soil, too. So a simple way of doing that is to construct terraces in both cases: conserving soil and moisture.

Terraces come naturally for farmers at konso, unlike farmers in other parts of the country. Significant numbers of terraces have been constructed in Ethiopia over the past 3 decades. Food for Work projects have given the main support and the grain acted as incentive in the construction of terraces. The picture we find at the ground is certainly mixed. Some areas have carried on the work with good practical results. In some others parts of the country, it was a partial success. Still in some others, it was a case of even demolishing existing structures. So did the Japanese get the knowhow from Konso? Maybe not after all, considering that Japan after all is as old as history.