Category: Indigenous knowledge systems

Back when I made my living applying an outmoded and discredited paradigm by going around collecting germplasm, I had the great good fortune of visiting the Hardamawt province of what at the time was the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen. The region, and in particular the beautiful and historic city of Shibam has recently been hit by devastating floods. I could link to news accounts, but I think the series of photographs Jeremy just sent me does a better job of summing up the situation than any number of newspaper articles.

Agriculture in the Hadramawt relies on spate irrigation:

Flood water from mountain catchments is diverted from river beds (wadi’s) and spread over large areas. Spate systems are very risk-prone. The uncertainty comes both from the unpredictable nature of the floods and the frequent changes to the river beds from which the water is diverted.

So flood damage is to be expected every once in a while, and people by and large know how to cope, though on this occasion the flooding seems to have been particularly bad. One of the ways people cope is by building strong houses. Some houses in Shibam are hundreds of years old, despite being made of mud brick. I remember that while collecting (this was 20 years ago) I asked people why they were still growing their local wheats rather than the new Green Revolution varieties. They said that the new varieties, though giving a higher grain yield, were too short, ((In fact, you could say they give higher yields partly because they are shorter.)) and they needed a lot of straw to make the mud bricks they used to build their homes.

Now, I haven’t been back to Shibam since then, and I don’t know whether the use of shorter wheats has spread. And I don’t know whether even if they have this has affected the quality or quantity of the local bricks. But I wonder.