Sustainability of farming terraces

Building and maintaining terraces has generally been believed to be the mos t advanced technique to promote the stability of sloping agricultural land. Bench terraces especially are considered to be able to reduce erosion, inc rease infiltration, and make the land more easily manageable during normal agricultural operations. This is why constructing terrace systems has becom e a popular soil conservation measure during this century within any soil a nd water conservation programme, especially in projects funded by foreign a id. But in many instances it could be observed that the terrace technology is rarely adopted by the land users after project funds dry up. This paper briefly describes the functions and components of terrace system s as well as the conditions and limitations of their construction. Based on these facts this paper trys to show and emphasise that the conditions whic h lead to the farming of terraces in a sustainable way should not be consid ered as being static. It is a fact that terrace systems are man made techni cal systems. They are the product of their natural, social, political and e conomical environment. Changes of these environmental conditions may theref ore result into changes in sustainability of the terrace system as part of a production system. Furthermore reference is made to the importance of hum an institutions as a key factor to sustainability of terrace systems.