Farshad, A.

Zinck, J.A.

NARCIS 

Traditional agriculture in semiarid western Iran : a case study of the Hamadan region = Agriculture traditionelle dans l'Ouest semi - aride de l'Iran : un cas d'etude dans la region Hamada

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1Scientific registration n° : 118Symposium n° : 45Presentation : posterTraditional agriculture in semiarid western Iran. Acase study of the Hamadan regionAgriculture traditionnelle dans l'Ouest semi-aride del'Iran. Un cas d'étude dans la région HamadaFARSHAD  Abbas, ZINCK, J. AlfredITC, P.O.Box 6, 7500AA  Enschede, The NetherlandsINTRODUCTIONFarming based upon production factors and practices used by farmers for generations iscalled traditional agriculture (Schultz, 1983). Traditional agriculture is fading as thesupporting rural social structures are disintegrating under the pressure of factors such aspopulation growth, urbanization and new  farming techniques. Only in remote areas, stillliving in relative autarchy, traditional farming can be traced. With the emerging paradigmof sustainability, study of traditional agriculture is receiving more attention assuming thatmuch can be learnt from it (Farshad and Zinck, 1995). Hereafter, the production factorsof a traditionally managed farming system are studied in the semiarid western Iran,namely the Hamadan plateau.The Hamadan plateau (1750 m asl), located at the foot of the central Zagros mountainrange (3600 m asl) about 400 km southwest of Tehran, has a semiarid steppic climatewith mild summers and very cold winters. The mean annual rainfall ranges between 320and 350 mm. Winter precipitation is mainly snow, lasting some six to eight months in themountainous areas and one to two months on the plateau. The rest of the precipitation isprovided by scarce spring and fall rains. The mean monthly temperature in Hamadanvaries from -5 0C in January to 24 0C in July, with an annual mean of 11 0C. Meanextreme temperatures are -10 0C and 36 0C, respectively. Over millennia, the local peoplebelonging to tribes of different origin (e.g. Persian, Turkish, Kurdish, Lorish) developeddry-farming and irrigation techniques to adapt to the above climatic constraints.HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF AGRICULTURE IN IRAN AND THEHAMADAN PROVINCEAccording  to  archaeological studies in Sialk , a district of Kashan 250 km south ofTehran, and in Zagheh, near Ghazwin about 300 km north of Tehran, people  moved atthe beginning of the last post - glacial period (approximately 10.000 to 11.000 years BP)from drying valleys in the mountains to plains where more water was available(Ghirshman, 1938). Deep excavation in the Sialk mound brought to light relics andremains of primitive agricultural societies. The Sialk culture flourished at the beginning2of the fifth millennium BC, whereas the Zagheh mound dates from the eighth millenniumBC (University of Tehran, 1971).  Our own research in the Sharra valley, in the vicinityof the village of Shirin-abad about 50 km east of the city of Hamadan, shows that around2500 years BP the land was used for rice cultivation. An old gleyed soil surface,containing small pieces of pottery, is buried under about 1.5 m glacis deposits, originatedby torrential transport in semiarid conditions from the surrounding highlands.Many dynasties with different socio-political structures have governed Persia. In somepast periods, such as between 559 and 330 BC, Persia included the whole extent of thepresent Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Turkey, Palestine, and parts of Egypt and the formerSoviet Union (University of Tehran, 1971).  The lack of political stability led to wars anddisruptions of the social structure, which were not beneficial to agricultural development.Since the beginning of the present century, relevant changes in  the social structure or atleast in the landownership took place countrywide, with significant repercussions in theHamadan region. From 1920  onwards, contacts with the western countries drasticallyincreased. Land reform came into action in the 1960s. The year 1979 is the beginning ofthe Islamic revolution. But the present social structure still includes some featuresinherited from earlier periods going back as far as 350 BCThe traditional rural social structure, before the land reform, was determined by theboneh, a collective production unit. The development of the boneh system was a socialand economic answer to the harsh natural conditions, in particular the water shortage foragriculture. Farmers belonging to a boneh supported one another, compensating for thelack of official protection against natural risks. The resulting cohesion and strength of therural societies have been dislocated over the last decades by a set of factors, such asrapid population growth, general welfare development, and introduction of modernagricultural techniques conducive to drastic land management changes and increasing useof groundwater resources.TRADITIONAL FARMING PRACTICESIrrigation water managementContrary to the present situation where irrigation water is provided mainly by tubewellsand dugwells from deep aquifers, in the past water supply varied with the physiographicconditions of the area. In mountains runoff water was harvested; in hilly areas the waterof a neighboring river was often diverted; in piedmonts underground tunnels ( ghanat )were dug, or use was made of springs (cheshmeh); and in valleys water was directlyhauled from river channels using the Persian wheel. The most innovative is the ghanattechnique, where a tunnel is excavated into alluvial deposits on a mountain skirt to tapthe aquifers and bring the water to the surface by gravity flow for irrigation (Fig.1). Inthe 1980s, the water delivery of 158 ghanats in the Hamadan-Bahar plain was estimated27.6 million cubic meters per year, with a discharge varying between  0.5 and 120 litresper second (Djamab, 1990).The distribution of water, especially that of a ghanat gained after so much effort, isregulated by customs and laws going back often to pre-Islamic times and early Islamic3codification (Wulff, 1966).  As ghanats are not equipped with any tap or valve, waterflows day and night the whole year around. This might be a disadvantage whencomparing with motorized deep wells. In practice, there are several traditional ways,very much village- dependent, to reduce water waste during the winter season andcontrol its fair distribution among the users. Excess water was used to irrigate vineyardsin winter according to a technique called yakhaub (yakh= ice; aub=water), which wasbelieved to be useful against pests, and to fill up underground reservoirs (aubanbaur)and underground ice-houses (yakhchaul), both supplying drinking water in the drysummer.The age of a ghanat may range from a few centuries to more than a millennium. Ahumus-rich topsoil horizon buried under a 1.5 m high ghanat mound was dated 1040years BP. Comparatively, the mean residence time of the organic matter in the surfacehorizon of the soil exposed in the immediate surroundings of the ghanat mound was 370years BP. Thus the selected ghanat is at least as old as 700 years, belonging to theKhwarazmian kingdom period. Considering its position on the landscape and the well-preserved access shafts, this ghanat is certainly not the oldest one in the area. Overcenturies, people learnt and implemented techniques of water harvesting for irrigationpurposes.The dry part for moghannis (diggers) Wet and dangerous part for moghannisGhanat mouth (ma’zhar)Shafts (wells)AquiferImpermeable layer (bedrock)MadarchahAluviumTunnel or galleryFig. 1 :  Schematic cross-section of a ghanat system(moghannis = ghanat diggers;  madarchah = the closest shaft to the mountainfront)4Use of animal manureAnimal raising was an important component of traditional agriculture. ow dung wasmostly used for fuel but also applied to the land, particularly in orchards. Chicken,pigeon, horse and human excrements were used in summer crops (= seifi), such asvegetables and melons. Fertility in exhausted wheat and barley fields was restored mainlythrough fallow and rotation practices, but also by adding ash, house wastes and materialfrom old house roofs and abandoned living places. Some decades ago, villagerspractically ignored the use of chemical fertilizers (Wilber, 1950). The application ofagrochemical in the country grew from little to  32 thousand tons per annum in the early1960s, and to 675 thousand tons by the mid 1970s (Karshenas, 1990).Manual tillage using animal-drawn wooden ploughTraditional land preparation for wheat and barley cultivation started with ploughing atthe beginning of spring, around the new year (nowrooz), after the land had been underfallow for one year. The same tract of land was again ploughed in autumn, followed bythe broadcasting of barley seed. In the case of wheat, seed broadcasting took place abouttwenty days after the second ploughing.Nowadays, modern agricultural machinery is used in the different production stages fromland preparation to harvesting, packing, transportation and marketing. This results froma deep transformation of the agricultural sector in recent years, while in the 1960s agricultural practices were still indigenous (Wulff, 1966). Now, traditional tools --animal- drawn ploughs, different types of harrow, and scoops for preparing furrows --are abandoned or only used in remote sloping and rocky areas, where no tractor canreach.  The traditional draft animal was the ox, but mules, horses and donkeys werecommon too in the past.    Micropedologic investigations, using digital processing of thin sections, revealed that thecalcareous soils of the area had far better physical conditions when traditionally tilled forcenturies than when exposed to mechanized farming (Fig. 2; Farshad, 1997). The mostimportant lesson to learn is that technology should not be copied blindly but adapted.5a  b     Fig. 2 : The effect of traditional (a) and mechanized (b) tillage on porosityAN INTEGRATED PRODUCTION SYSTEMA traditional production unit is a complex system of interrelated activities carried out bya household. It includes three main components : crop farming, animal husbandry andhandicraft production (Fig. 3). The output of one activity may be input to another one,leading to an increasing transformation of the primary farm products (vegetal and animal)either for auto- consumption or sale. Functional integration and temporal distribution ofthe activities make that all family members participate full-time all the year around. Thelarge variety of products generated helped mitigate all kinds of risks, from climatic(drought, late frost) to economic (market price fluctuations, product scarcity). Such anintegration is the result of a long co-evolution between ecosystem and sociosystem(Farshad and Zinck, 1993). Animal husbandry was present in all households. Oxen, cows, sheep, goats, hens andpigeons were common. Eggs, milk products, meat,  flour from wheat and barley,vegetables, fruits, leather and wool were produced by each household with the activeparticipation of all family members. On the other hand, large flocks of sheep and goats,belonging to powerful and often absentee landlords, were taken care of by paidshepherds. Sheep and goats were daily slaughtered for meat production. Animal skinswere either exported to larger market centers or bought at the farm-gate by agents ofsmall local factories. Many people were involved in leather beneficiation from cleaningand skin processing to dyeing, as well as in selling and shoe- making.6Wool from sheep and goats had to undergo a long process of beneficiation before it wasready for making carpets. This occupation, called farshbaufi, demanded the participationof many workers to make the wooden installations (dastgauh-e- ghauli), produce thecotton threads (nakh-ris), construct the basic thread-frames (chelleh-dewan), prepare thewool threads and dye them in different colours (rangraz), elaborate natural dyes fromwalnut shells,  pomegranate skins and other natural substances, make the carpet designs(nagh'sheh-kesh), and finally weave the carpets (ghaulibaf). Except for some reallyspecialized jobs requiring designers and carpenters, farmers were involved in almost allwool processing steps, on top of their farming activities. Women were mainly responsiblefor carpet weaving. The rural crafts were either marketed locally or otherwise exportedto larger towns. Carpets and guelims, a kind of woven carpet, were mainly exported,ultimately to foreign countries.Fig. 3 : Model of a traditional farming system in the Hamadan provinceCONCLUSIONProduction factors of a traditionally managed farming system in the Hamadan areainclude irrigation water supplied from underground tunnels, springs and, to a lesserextent, harvested runoff; the use of manure in place of artificial fertilizers; and manualtillage using animal-drawn wooden plough. A traditional agricultural system is notconfined to cropping but also includes the livestock and farm household. Activities suchas meat, leather, milk and craft production, in a given frame of social values, communitynorms and landownership, are integrated with and control the farming system.7REFERENCESDjamab Bureau. 1990. A general study of water resources at the national level. Ministryof Power of Iran, Teheran.Farshad, A. and Zinck, J.A. 1993. Seeking agricultural sustainability. Agriculture,Ecosystems and Environment 47: 1-12.Farsahd, A. and J.A. Zinck. 1995. The fate of agriculture in the semi-arid regions ofwestern Iran. A case study of the Hamadan region. Annals of Arid Zone 34 (4) : 235-242.Farshad, A. 1997. Analysis of integrated soil and water management practices withindifferent agricultural systems under semi-arid conditions of Iran and evaluation oftheir sustainability. Unpublished PhD dissertation. University of Ghent, Belgium.Farshad, A. and Zinck, J.A., 1997. Indigenous knowledge and agricultural sustainability.Conference on Geo-Information for Sustainable Land Management. ITC, Enschede,The Netherlands.   Ghirshman, R. ( 1938). Iran, des origines a`l'Islam. Translated to Persian by Moiin, M.(1993). Scientific and Cultural Publications Company, Tehran, Iran.Karshenas, M. 1990. Oil, state and industrialization in Iran. Cambridge University Press,Cambridge.Schultz, T.W. 1983. Transforming traditional agriculture. The University of ChicagoPress, Chicago.University of Tehran. 1971. Historical Atlas of Iran. Tehran University Press, Tehran,Iran.Wilber, D.N. 1950. Iran: past and present. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NewJersey.Wulff, H.E. 1966. The traditional crafts of Persia. Their development, technology, andinfluence on eastern and western civilizations. The Massachusetts Institute ofTechnology Press, USA.Keywords : Indigenous knowledge, traditional agriculture, semi-arid region, IranMots clés : savoirs locaux, agriculture traditionnelle, région semi-aride, Iran

Traditional agriculture in semiarid western Iran : a case study of the Hamadan region = Agriculture traditionelle dans l'Ouest semi - aride de l'Iran : un cas d'etude dans la region Hamada

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