Wellmann Imre szerk.: A Magyar Mezőgazdasági Múzeum Közleményei 1971-1972 (Budapest, 1973)

Fussel, George Edwin: What is traditional agriculture

the processes employed are the same as they have been from time immemorial. The second very ancient method is the terrace cultivation that is to be found in the mountainous regions of the Far East, in South America, and in Borneo, Sarawak, and some the islands of the Pacific — even the Philippines. One writer has called these terraces lynchets, and possibly that may be an explanation of the use of these unexplained terraces in England. These are however mainly found on dry uplands and the reason for their existence is rather doubtful. Terrace cultivation is also to be found in some parts of Europe, in Italy, where the peasants of Piedmont, at least those driven bypressure of population to the higher levels, were still engaged in the laborious work of making terraces in the eighteenth century, possibly but not certainly, above those at a lower altitude. Terrace cultivation is to be found in other places, e.g., the High Tatra. This sort of terrace cultivation was commonplace in some areas long before the Christian era, and many of the sites have remained in use until the present day. The process involved irrigation water being conserved in the heights and allowed to run downwards along the different levels, which were provided with run-off channels at particular points. Something of the same sort is to be seen in the water meadows in the mountains of Central Europe, the Black Forest and so on, a process that was taken up with great advantage in seventeenth century England; but, of course, their similarity did not make it the same thing. Terrace cultivation must be considered traditional; the water meadow intended to increase the yield of hay need not be so considered. Another type of irrigated farming was discovered by the adventurous Spaniards who conquered Mexico. This type may have been common to all of what is now called the American southwest. In Mexiko long narrow strips of land were surrounded on all sides by irrigation canals. These lands remained fertile for centuries and produced several crops a year. The southwestern tribes, too, grew maize, beans, squash, chili peppers, with some other things now looked upon as weeds. In Arizona the Navajos still carry on in much the same way, growing mixed crops on plots surrounded by water channels, which can be regulated, or may be filled by hand. Once more, this type of farming, only roughly indicated here, can properly be described as traditional. I hope I have shown that at different periods of time people then living must have thought that they were following traditional practices. As somebody once said the father of the family, and most likely the mother was out working in the fields, or with the stock. The ageing grandfather, possibly too feeble to do hard work, remained at home, dozing at the fireside except when he was telling the children, the boys more particularly, how the work must be done. The time lag in knowledge ensured that it remained static until for one reason or another a change in ideas and practice was forced upon the always,, or almost always, conservative outlook of the farmers. No doubt the grandfather, or other elder, found any new ideas of the young quite repugnant; but in spite of the heavy fetters of tradition the farmers of the temperate zone have made many changes in those forms of farming that could correctly be called traditional in various places and in different periods. The attempt to do much the same thing in those parts of the world where traditional agriculture is still practised is being made by people from the temperature zone and not by the inhabitants of these areas themselves — except under instruction. It is no doubt