Froemming, Steven John; 1999; Rational Choice and Collective Action in an Andean Community. Ph.D. Thesis, University of Washington, Seattle. Excerpt from Chapter 2 (pages 142-148).

Communal Regulation of Sectoral Fallow

Various explanations have been offered for the existence of communally-regulated sectoral fallow in the Andes:

Regeneration of the Soil. An extended fallow period provides time to rebuild soil fertility before the next planting. The soil is rejuvenated through such mechanisms as the fixation of nitrogen from cover plants, the recuperation of minerals from rain water, green manure, and the manuring of fields by grazing animals. The rotation schedule of potatoes-oqa-lima beans likewise contributes to the restoration of certain nutrients in the maway zone (Blanco 1983). Hurtado Huamán et. al. (1996) point out that with a relatively predictable rotation, comuneros in Ccachín often relocate their herds to a sector which will be planted within the next year or two, facilitating the recycling of nutrients. Orlove et. al. (1996) note, however, that given herding practices in the Andes, there is no direct transfer of fertility by the daily movement of animals from one area to another as in other parts of the world; rather, the animals only transform vegetable matter already present on site. Despite the increased labor that fields covered by grama require to reopen, especially in the maway zone, comuneros in Ccachín recognize it as "abono" ('fertilizer'). Although a noxious weed that crowds out autochthonous cover, with its extensive root mass, it also plays an important role in stabilizing the soil and preventing erosion.

Elimination of Disease and Parasites. As mentioned earlier in this chapter, one of the ways that the community assembly deals with the problem of the potato fungus rancha is to choose a sector for the following year distant from that year's planting. Several varieties of cyst nematodes also parasitize potatoes (Globodera rostochiensis and G. pallida, among others), and leaving a five to six year interval between potato plantings dramatically reduces the presence and viability of their eggs in the soil (Blanco 1983). The seven-year (plus) cycle in the main potato zone of Ccachín is noteworthy in this regard, and the fallow period in Qochayoq is even longer. A seven-year cycle is common in the Andes (see Caparó 1994, for example), and the period between potato plantings is over four years in more than 90% of Andean communities (Orlove et. al. 1996). Wormy potatoes do not seem to be as big a problem in Ccachín as other wormy tubers (wormy lisas, for example), and in the maway sectors, potatoes are planted in consecutive years (albeit in reduced quantities) and the subsequent fallow period is much longer. Different varieties of potatoes and different tubers are parasitized by different nematodes, and I don't know whether the parasites that infest the lisa and oqa in the maway zone can be eliminated with a longer, shorter, or similar period of fallow, if at all.

Labor Efficiency. Cooperation among all farmers to plant in contiguous fields at the same time reduces the amount of time everyone must spend fencing and watching over their animals to avoid crop damage. In areas where a potato crop is followed by a cereal crop, the sequence potatoes-cereals is more efficient than the reverse, as the techniques used in plowing and harvesting potatoes prepare the ground for grains, but ground worked for cereals is not yet prepared for potatoes (Orlove et. al. 1996). While both of these factors may explain aspects of the communally-regulated fallow systems, they do not explain the rotation of sectors as such. The potato-cereal sequence is not found in Ccachín, but similar reasoning probably holds true for such crops as tarwi, beans, and squash found in the maway zone.

Territorial Defense. Large communal plots worked by large numbers of households are easier to defend from incursions than small, isolated individual plots. Regularly rotating planting zones over vast extensions of territory serves to mark a community's use rights to the area, whether the interest is primarily agricultural, pastoral, or both. As indicated in Chapter 1, a widely-held principle in the Andes is that "the land belongs to those who work it." Within communities, unworked fields revert to the community for redistribution. Between communities, land that is not worked is easily lost.

Conformity to the Cultural Ideal. A variety of other institutions and practices in the Andes are based on an equal division between all, with a sequential rotation through the system to implement it. The rotation between plots in irrigation systems, the rotation between holders of civil and religious offices, and even the rotation between musicians and dancers in the orchestration and choreography of music and dance have much in common. Andeans have models and experience from other domains that they can apply to communal land management, and there is a consensus that they are right and reasonable.

Some of the explanations above address some aspects of communally-regulated fallow more than others, and none are mutually exclusive. The ecological explanations address not only the reasons for communally-regulated fallow, but also the patterning of the rotation systems: the number of sectors and the length of the cycle. From this perspective, it appears that:

In a study of the soil fertility of eight of the 35-plus sectors of the communally-regulated fallow zones of Ccachín, Hurtado Huamán et. al. conclude that the amount of organic material, phosphorous, and potassium present is independent of the number of years a sector has been left in fallow (nitrogen levels covaried with organic material). They suggest that these results "are exceptionally important because they put in doubt the utility of the fallow. If the fallow doesn't adequately restore the fertility of the soils, then what is the real objective of fallow?" (1996:70). In answering the question, they lean toward the elimination of disease and parasites explanation, based on informant reports about the spacing of plantings to avoid rancha, rather than on any analysis of pathogens in the soil.

I am not competent to judge the sampling procedure or soil analysis, and leave it to specialists in the field. Rancha can not be the original, nor the only, explanation however, as villagers say that rancha is a relatively new problem, while the sectoral fallow system has been in existence for centuries. It's informative, therefore, to consider what else the comuneros say about their rotation system. In one form or another, I have heard comments pointing to all of the explanations above.

The most common explanation I received from villagers for why they need to rotate their fields is that "the soil gets tired out." It's possible that this response is often motivated more by the metaphorical oppositions of "being tired" and "resting" ("sayk'usqa"/ "samay"; "cansada"/"descansando") used to describe the cultivation/fallow cycle than it is by agronomic observation, but sufficient detail is often added to lend credence to the latter.

Most of my questions have been with reference to the maway zone, because this is the area that has a multi-year cultivation cycle, and where the rotations have undergone the most change. Many villagers report that they plant mostly potatoes the first year a maway sector is opened because potatoes can be sold. The second year, they say, potatoes do less well, so they plant more lisa, oqa, and associated subsistence crops. By the third year "la tierra está cansada" and it hardly pays to plant potatoes at all.

"Being tired" is an ambiguous term, more symptom than cause, but sometimes informants are more specific. People commonly say that with repeated workings, the soil becomes "hard" ("dura"). This suggests changes in soil quality (compactness), but it suggests the labor efficiency explanation as well. As indicated earlier, the ground gets "hard" after three or four years in the cornfields as well, and oxen teams are brought in to rework it when plot size, slope, and availability permit. The same solution, however, is not used in the maway sectors. Animal traction would not serve to open up new sectors in the maway zone because the cover of grama is usually too thick, and oxen-drawn plows would not turn over and mix the soil to the depth that foot plows do (see Morlon et. al. 1996 for a discussion of factors that enter into decision making about the use of each in the different production zones). Chakitaklla ('foot plows') are not used in the cornfields in Ccachín (Hurtado Huamán et. al. 1996:15 to the contrary), but are used in both the early and main potato zones (replaced by a pick when there is a lot of grama).⁽¹⁾ There is a close link between the use of chakitaklla and communally-regulated fallow throughout the Andes -- a one-to one correspondence in the geographic limits of each -- and the reigning hypothesis is that this has to do with the organization and productivity of labor (Orlove et. al. 1996). To the extent that labor efficiency is an issue, it may be -- and this is my hypothesis -- that fields are rotated in the maway sector when they would otherwise have to be turned over in depth again.

Some comuneros offer another productivity-based explanation for crop rotation, one that does not usually appear in the literature and which I have not yet listed. Rather than saying that the land becomes tired, they say that the seed becomes tired. They say that if they plant potato seed in the same place every year, it loses its energy and they have to bring in new seed from elsewhere. By rotating their fields every year, they can use their native varieties of seeds indefinitely without buying or trading for new. This explanation may blur into the pest control one, as rotation helps maintain seed stock disease and parasite free, but I understand them to mean something more: that the vigor of the seed itself is maintained by rotating sectors.

While the three explanations above are offered directly by villagers to explain their rotation system, the territorial defense explanation can be inferred from what they say in other contexts. After the boundary marking ("deslinde") of Qochayoq's disputed southern boundary with Chupani in 1990, for example, an event that ended in a hostile confrontation between the villagers in Ccachín and Chupani, community officials in Ccachín complained privately that their compatriots in Qochayoq deserved much of the blame, because they hadn't asserted their rights earlier by using the land (see Chapter 13). I took them to mean "using" or "working" the land in the agricultural sense, as none of Qochayoq's potato fields are in the Chupani sector, and while there is some herding in the zone (precarious because of the conflict), there is little visible evidence of Qochayoq's stake in the area.

Finally, a cultural explanation of the rotation system is indicated by such reasons given by the comuneros for its existence as "por costumbre" ('by custom') and "por gusto no más" ('taste, nothing more'). Gose (1991) notes that the former expression is most often used in the Andes to explain an act that cannot be appropriately discussed at length in articulated speech, so it cannot be assumed to refer to custom as such (though clearly, simply following the pattern of what has been done before or is done in other domains may be one of the unarticulated proximate explanations subsumed within). The latter, "por gusto," is a less equivocal response, and the one time I heard it used with reference to maway rotation, the comunero pointed out that the grama in this sector makes good fertilizer, animal manure is always used to supplement the natural fertility of the soil anyway, and that in comparison, the village gardens, found at the same altitude, are cropped annually. The implication was that they could work the maway sectors more intensively if they wanted to.

The tendency in the Andes in general is toward reduction in the fallow period and expanded privatization as population increases and as greater market opportunities emerge (Campbell and Godoy 1986; Orlove and Godoy 1986; Orlove et. al. 1996). Due to the agrarian reform and an increased land base, this tendency has not been as sharp in Ccachín as it has in many areas of the Andes, but intensification of production can be seen in the sectors closest to the community (the maway zone), when contrasted with the higher and more distant sectors (the hatun tarpuy zones). The former are planted 20-25% of the time (measured in years), while the latter remain at more historic levels of 10-15%. Since change has occurred in most all the relevant social and cultural domains, it is difficult to separate out the individual effects of these changes on the system as a whole. The use of fungicides, insecticides, and hybrid and treated seeds are becoming increasingly common, providing alternative solutions to the use of sectoral fallow to control disease and parasites and to maintain quality seed stock. Territorial disputes are increasingly arbitrated by the State, reducing the role of collective boundary markings and plowing the land to legitimatize property rights. Private, individuated styles and solutions are gaining over collective, participatory ones in a host of cultural domains due to changing circumstances, changing opportunities, or changes in cultural ideals brought about by Westernization, reducing the hold of traditional models and patterns. Mechanical technology and regeneration of the soil are the two areas where there has been the least change, with the former marked by the relatively recent substitution of metal for wood in the cutting edges of foot plows, hoes, and other hand tools but by no change in the type of traction. The latter continues to be based on the direct application of animal manures at the time of planting. Were inexpensive, high-quality fertilizer to become available, the link between agriculture and pastoralism could be weakened, inducing further changes in the system (Guillet 1984).

The sectoral fallow system in Ccachín is premised on and conditioned by the complementarity and competition that exists between agriculture and pastoralism in a particular ecological context, with a particular level of technology, and a mode of production based on both. Rather than identify the most critical factor for the system in a world where so much is changing, it is sufficient here to emphasize that changes in any of these factors can modify the system, and changes in all of them can lead to its dismantlement. Change affects the production zones differentially, however, and given increasing agricultural demand, we are likely to see continued expansion of the system into the higher and more distant zones, with the opening of former pasture for agriculture in the short and medium term, and further intensification of the lower sectoral fallow areas close to the community. Given their distance and ecological precariousness, it is unlikely that communally-regulated sectoral fallow in the higher outlying areas will disappear anytime soon.

Notes

1. When picks are used, it is because the entire surface needs to be worked. As Morlon et. al.(1996) note, because of the amount of labor required, such complete plowings are only used on land which will be cropped in consecutive years, so that the extra investment will be compensated by a longer production cycle.

References Cited

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Caparó, Raúl León
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Campbell, Bruce, and Ricardo A. Godoy
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Gose, Peter
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