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Abstract
The most fertile part of the Arabian Peninsula is the southwestern corner known historically as Yemen. The primary occupation of Yemen’s tribes over the centuries has been sedentary agriculture, stemming back to the pre-Islamic South Arabian kingdoms. Up until the revolution that toppled the Zaydī imamate in 1962, agricultural activities had change little over the centuries. After the revolution and civil war in the north, development aid poured into Yemen and access became available to modern machinery, especially diesel pumps for wells, and supplies. This article analyzes the transition from a household subsistence-based production to cash cropping in the northern highlands of Yemen. The focus is on the regions north and east of the capital Ṣanʿāʾ, which received less aid than the coastal region and southern highlands. Details are provided on the methods and production of agricultural crops in the period between 1975 and 1985, with an assessment of the potential future development of agriculture in a country currently torn apart by war.
Notes
1 For an overview of Yemen’s modern history, see: Dresch, A History of Modern Yemen (2001).
2 For the English version, see: Yemen Arab Republic Govt, Summary of the Final Results of the Agricultural Census in Eleven Provinces (1982). In the 1990s The Republic of Yemen’s Ministry of Agriculture issued periodic statistical reports on agriculture, e.g., Yemen Arab Republic Govt, Kitāb al-Iḥṣāʾ al-zirāʿī [Book of Agricultural Statistics] (1997). The most recent set of statistics is, Yemen Arab Republic Govt, Agricultural Statistics Yearbook (2015).
3 This is provided in: Steffen, Dubach, Geiser, Final Report on the Airphoto Interpretation Project of the Swiss Technical Co–Operation Service, Berne (1978).
4 Kopp, Die Agrargeographie der Arabischen Republik Jemen [The Agricultural Geography of the Yemen Arab Republic] (1981). His research on al-Qāsim was published in: Kopp, Al-Qasim: Wirtschafts–und sozialgeographische Strukturen und Entwicklungsprozesse in einem Dorf des jemenitischen Hochlandes [Al-Qasim: Economic and Socialgeographic Structures and Development in a Village of the Yemeni Highlands] (1977).
5 Mundy, Domestic Government: Kinship, Community and Polity in North Yemen (1995); and Mundy, “Irrigation and Society in a Yemeni Valley: On the Life and Death of a Beautiful Source”, Peuples Méditerranéens 46.1 (1989), pp. 97–128.
6 Varisco, The Adaptive Dynamics of Water Allocation in al-Ahjur, Yemen Arab Republic, PhD diss. (1982); Varisco, “Sayl and Ghayl: The Ecology of Water Allocation in Yemen”, Human Ecology 11.4 (1983); Varisco, “The Future of Terrace Farming in North Yemen: A Development Dilemma”, Agriculture and Human Values 8.1–2 (1992); Varisco, “The Production of Sorghum (Dhurah) in Highland Yemen”, Arabian Studies 7 (1985).
7 Betzler, Sozialer Umbruch und Kulturlandschaftswandel in Südarabien: Agrargeographische Untersuchungen im Umland von Ṣanʿāʾ [Social and Cultural Landscape Change in South Arabia: Agricultural Geographic Investigations around Ṣanʿāʾ] (1987).
8 Gingrich, Der Agrarkalender der Munebbih: Eine Ethnologische Studie zu Sozialem Kontext und Regionalem Vergleich eines Tribalen Sternenkalenders in Südwestarabian [Southwest Arab Star Calendar: An Ethnological Study of the Social Context and Regional Comparison of the Tribal Agricultural Calendar of Munebbih in Yemen] (1989); Gingrich, Südwestarabische Sternenkalender: Eine Ethnologische Studie zu Struktur, Kontext und Regionalem Vergleich des Tribalen Agrarkalenders der Munebbih im Jemen [Southwest Arabian Star Calendars: An Ethnological Study of the Structure, Context and Regional Comparison of Tribal Agricultural Calendars of the Munebbih in Yemen] (1994).
9 Gingrich and Heiss, Beiträge zur Ethnographie der Provinz Ṣaʿda (Nordjemen) [Contributions to the Ethnography of the Ṣaʿda Province] (1986).
10 Weir, A Tribal Order: Politics and Law in the Mountains of Yemen (2007).
11 Bédoucha, “Une tribu sédentaire: la tribu des hauts plateaux Yéménites” [A Sedentary Tribe: The Tribe in the Highlands of Yemen], l’Homme 27 (1987).
12 Lichtenthäler, “Power, Politics and Patronage: Adaptation of Water Rights among Yemen’s Northern Highland Tribes”, Études rurales 155.156 (2000); Lichtenthäler, Political Ecology and the Role of Water: Environment, Society and Economy in Northern Yemen (2016).
13 For details on agriculture during the Mutawakkilite Kingdom, see: Varisco, “The State of Agriculture in the Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen, 1918–1962: A Documentary Overview”, Austrian Academy of Sciences in Social Anthropology working paper 32 (2018).
14 Betzler, Sozialer Umbruch und Kulturlandschaftswandel in Südarabien, p. 223 notes that the first motor pump entered Yemen in 1924 but until 1955 only about one hundred had been installed, most near Ṣanʿāʾ.
15 Keen, The Agricultural Development of the Middle East (1946), p. 10.
16 Kopp, Die Agrargeographie der Arabischen Republik Jemen, pp. 182–219.
17 Ward, The Water Crisis in Yemen: Managing Extreme Water Scarcity in the Middle East (2014), p. 7.
18 I discounted the population of Mīdī in the province of Ḥajja, since this is primarily coastal.
19 Lambardi, “Divisioni Amministrative del Yemen con Notizie Economiche e Demografiche” [Administrative Divisions of Yemen with Economic and Demographic Notices], Oriente Moderno 27.7–9 (1947), pp. 143–62.
20 Sharafaddin, Yemen:“Arabia Felix” (1961), p. 7.
21 Not included in this study are the following governorates: al-Bayḍāʾ, Dhamār, al-Ḥudayda, Ibb, Ta‘izz, nor the added governorates of the former PDRY after unification. In the YAR the main term for the governorate switched from liwā to muḥāfaẓa, probably borrowing the term from Egypt.
22 Yemen Arab Republic Govt, Statistical Year Book (1974–5).
23 The Ṣaʿda basin, which is not identical with the governorate borders, has a total area of 213 square kilometers and a basic altitude of about 1,900 meters. It extends thirty kilometers in a southeast–northwest orientation with a distance of sixteen kilometers at its widest point [Lichtenthäler, “Power, Politics and Patronage”, p. 143]. The governorate is actually over 11,000 square kilometers. At an altitude of 1900 meters, the basin extends thirty kilometers to the northwest-southeast and, at its widest point, sixteen kilometers to the southeast direction.
24 See notes 8 and 9.
25 Gingrich, Der Agrarkalender der Munebbih, p. 218
26 This is a local term for carrot (jazar).
27 Gingrich and Heiss, “A Note on Traditional Agricultural Tools in Ṣaʿdah Province (with Special Reference to the Ard)”, Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies 16 (1986).
28 The term anwāʾ refers to the twenty-eight zodiacal asterisms known as the lunar stations (manāzil al-qamar) in Arab astronomy. For details on this system, see: Varisco, “The Origin of the Anwāʾ in Arab Tradition”, Studia Islamica 74 (1991).
29 This system is described by Gingrich, Südwestarabische Sternenkalender; and Varisco, “The Agricultural Marker Stars in Yemeni Folklore”, Asian Folklore Studies 52.1 (1993).
30 Gingrich, Der Agrarkalender der Munebbih, p. 338.
31 Gingrich and Heiss, Beiträge zur Ethnographie der Provinz Ṣa‘da (Nordjemen), p. 27. They note that motor pumps, tractors and more regional influence by the government made it possible to use the inner parts of the basin.
32 Yemen Arab Republic Govt, Summary of the Final Results of the Agricultural Census in Eleven Provinces. The area of each governorate does not comprise a uniform ecozone, so these statistics are only useful on a broad, general level.
33 These figures were taken before the construction of the new Maʾrib dam, inaugurated in 1986.
34 Yemen Arab Republic Govt, Summary of the Final Results of the Agricultural Census in Eleven Provinces (1983).
35 Ibid.
36 It should be noted that there is a short dhirāʿ of about fifty centimeters and a long dhirāʿ of about seventy centimeters.
37 Yemen Arab Republic Govt, Summary of the Final Results of the Agricultural Census in Eleven Provinces (1983).
38 Ibid.
39 For details on the use of cereal grains in the Ṣaʿda region, see: Lichtenthäler, Political Ecology and the Role of Water, pp. 149–53. Sorghum is highly valued both as a food and an important source of fodder [Varisco, “The Production of Sorghum (Dhurah) in Highland Yemen”, pp. 68–70].
40 Lichtenthäler, Political Ecology and the Role of Water, p. 114, who notes that increased salinity in the region’s pumped groundwater favors production of lucerne.
41 My thanks to Dr Marieke Brandt of the Institute for Social Anthropology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences for pointing this out.
42 For information on traditional plant protection in Yemen, see: Varisco, “Indigenous Plant Protection Methods in Yemen”, Geojournal 37 (1995), pp. 27–8.
43 Yemen Arab Republic Govt, Summary of the Final Results of the Agricultural Census in Eleven Provinces (1983).
44 Ibid.
45 Gingrich, Der Agrarkalender der Munebbih; Lichtenthäler, Political Ecology and the Role of Water; Steffen, Dubach, Geiser, Final Report on the Airphoto Interpretation Project of the Swiss Technical Co-operation Service, Berne; Weir, A Tribal Order. Note: This is not a comprehensive list, as there are fertile parts of the areas of Khawlān ibn ʿAmr.
46 Eger, “Rainwater Harvesting in the Yemeni Highlands”, Yemen Studien 1 (1984); and, Eger, Runoff Agriculture: A Case Study about the Yemeni Highlands (1987); see also, Lichtenthäler, Political Ecology and the Role of Water, pp. 201–06; Vogel, “Impoundment-Type Bench Terracing with Underground Conduits in Jibal Haraz, Yemen Arab Republic”, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 13.1 (1988).
47 Rossi, “Note sull' Irrigazione, L'agricoltura e le Stagioni nel Yemen” [Notes on the Irrigation, Agriculture and Seasons of Yemen], Oriente Moderno 33 (1953), pp. 349–61. This is translated into English in: Varisco, “The State of Agriculture in the Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen, 1918–1962” (2018), pp. 23–31.
48 Mundy, Domestic Government, pp. 62–82. The details here are taken from this work.
49 “Producing from late February to December the fruits include, in order of ripening, two types of apricot, peach, apple, pear, fig, pomegranate, prickly pear, two kinds of quince, walnut, winter citron and orange, as well as grapes” [Mundy, Domestic Government, p. 74].
50 Rossi, “Note sull' Irrigazione, L'agricoltura e le Stagioni nel Yemen”, pp. 351–52.
51 For details on Yemeni plow cultivation, see: Varisco, “The Ard in Highland Yemeni Agriculture”, Tools and Tillage 4.3 (1983); and Varisco, “Terminology for Plough Cultivation in Yemeni Arabic”, Journal of Semitic Studies 49.1 (2004). Information on highland plows is also provided by Gingrich and Heiss, “A Note on Traditional Agricultural Tools in Ṣaʿdah Province”.
52 The causes for Yemen’s reliance on imported food are discussed by Mundy, The Strategies of the Coalition in the Yemen War: Aerial Bombardment and Food War (2018), p. 8.
53 For a discussion of the remittance impact, see: Varisco and Adra, “Affluence and the Concept of the Tribe in the Central Highlands of the Yemen Arab Republic”, Affluence and Cultural Survival, ed. by Salisbury and Tooker (1984).
54 The qashshām was a client grouping among what were locally known as the Banī Khums during the Mutawakkilite Kingdom.
55 These figures are taken from the Republic of Yemen’s Agricultural Statistics Yearbook (2015).
56 For more information on qāt use in Yemen, see: Varisco, “On the Meaning of Chewing: The Significance of Qât (Catha Edulis) in the Yemen Arab Republic”, IJMES 18.1 (1986); and Varisco, “Qât and Traditional Healing in Yemen”, Herbal Medicine in Yemen, ed. Schönig and Hehmeyer (2012).
57 Mundy, Domestic Government, p. 65.
58 Lichtenthäler, “Power, Politics and Patronage”, p. 160.
59 Government statistics began to be collected systematically in 1969–70 in the YAR, but it is difficult to assess their accuracy and their usefulness for comparison to seemingly more reliable statistics in later years.
60 In the mid-1980s in the PDRY between 40,000–70,000 hectares were potentially cultivable from floods and some 20,000 hectares from wells, according to the World Bank, Staff Appraisal Report. Peoples Democratic Republic of Yemen Agricultural Research and Extension Project (1985), p. 1.
61 Hübschen, Integrated Water Resources Management for Countries of the Middle East (2011), p. 80.
62 FAO, Crop and Food Security Assessment Mission to Yemen (2009).
63 Lichtenthäler, “Power, Politics and Patronage”, p. 145.
64 Hübschen, Integrated Water Resources Management for Countries of the Middle East, p. 80.
65 Mundy, Domestic Government, pp. 36–8.
66 Steffen, Dubach, Geiser, Final Report on the Airphoto Interpretation Project of the Swiss Technical Co-Operation Service, Berne, p. II, 169.
67 For an analysis of women’s role in agriculture due to the out-migration of men, see: Adra, The Impact of Emigration on Women’s Roles in Agriculture in the Yemen Arab Republic (1983).
68 For an overview of this crisis, see: Lackner, Yemen in Crisis: Autocracy, Neo-Liberalism and the Disintegration of a State (2017).
69 For details on the recent destruction of the Ṣaʿda region, see: Amnesty International, ‘Bombs Fall from the Sky Day and Night’: Civilians under Fire in Northern Yemen’ (2015).
70 Runoff water harvesting has been successful applied in a number of arid regions [Boers and Ben-Asher, “A Review of Rainwater Harvesting”, Agricultural Water Management 5.2 (1982)]. Current research is highlighted by ICARDA (http://wli.icarda.org/).
71 Lichtenthäler, Political Ecology and the Role of Water, p. 128.
72 Ibid., p. 5. For details on customary law and its relation to Islamic water law, see: Varisco, The Adaptive Dynamics of Water Allocation in al-Ahjur, Yemen Arab Republic, pp. 224–61.
73 See: Varisco, “The Future of Terrace Farming in North Yemen” (1992).
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Daniel Martin Varisco
Daniel Martin Varisco is President of the American Institute for Yemeni Studies and Associated Researcher at the Institute for Social Anthropology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Hollandstrasse 11–13, 1020, Vienna, Austria.