DEVELOPMENT ANTHROPOLOGY IN ACTION
 
 
 
 in a nutshell

WHAT?

a case study in the development anthropology of sustainable agriculture

WHO?

a team of five led by anthropologist Dan Varisco

WHERE?

Yemen, an Arabic-speaking country on the southwestern corner of the Arabian peninsula

WHEN?

two weeks in Spring 1991

WHY?

project for the Ministry of Agriculture to document traditional plant protection methods of Yemeni farmers

HOW?

how does development anthropology work?
When you are ready to go to the full report, click here...
 
This page is designed to introduce students to what development anthropologists
do by using a specific case study about Yemen.
It is still being developed.
I would appreciate your comments and suggestions for further improvement and expansion of this page.
Thanks.
 
© Daniel MartinVarisco
anthdmv@hofstra.edu
Anthropology
Hofstra University
Hempstead, NY 11590
(516) 463-5590
(all photos by Dan Varisco unless otherwise noted.)
 
 What am I?
Can you guess the type of crop pest shown above?
Do you know its scientific name?
Answers
 
What?
• Summary . . . This website explores a case study in the development anthropology of sustainable agriculture in Yemen. The project was carried out in 1991 by a five-man team led by Dan Varisco.
 
• Objective . . . to identify the range of indigenous practices of plant or crop protection in Yemen in order to develop appropriate recommendations for Integrated Pest Management (IPM) in the country's development program. The ultimate goal of an IPM program is sustainable and affordable crop protection which is within the capabilities of farmers and does not harm people or the environment. To the extent that farmers already practice viable methods of traditional crop protection, these need to be understood and encouraged in the development process.
 
• Focus . . . traditional methods of pest and disease control in use before the introduction of chemical pesticides, herbicides and fungicides. Examination of both medieval agricultural sources and contemporary practices. Special attention is paid to the cultivation of date palms.
 
• Problem . . . the preventive value of crop protection is often forgotten by contemporary farmers. Many farmers now rely exclusively on the application of chemicals for crop protection and have abandoned effective protection methods of the past. There are viable organic and traditional methods, more economical than chemical applications, that can be immediately applied by Yemeni farmers.
 
• Details . . . documentation of how Yemeni farmers protect their crops from animal pests, plant pests and diseases. One major practice is a form of biological control in which a predatory ant (qa's) is brought from the highlands in order to eat larvae and moths which infest coastal dates. This method is described in a 13th century agricultural text and continues to the present day. Also, sesame oil is applied to the flowering date branches at the time of pollenation in order to protect these from disease; this is a practice also documented in the medieval texts. Several examples were documented of trap plants being placed near a crop in order to ward off harmful insects. These includes barley, colocynth, garlic, onion, Nerium oleander, Ricinus communis (L.) and Calotropis procera. There are also non-biological mechanisms, such as spraying with dirt, dousing with water, use of smoke or heat, use of protective devices and manual removal of infected parts.
Pollenating date palm by hand in Hadramawt
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 Who?
 
(Photo by A. R. Dubaie)

My name is Dan Varisco.

I designed the project, coordinated the team in the field and wrote the main report. By 1991 I had worked for ten years as a development anthropologist, with over a dozen consulting jobs in Yemen.

This was an exciting project to do since I was able to combine my interests in anthropology, environmental analysis and the history of Arab agriculture towards one goal -- to better understand how Yemeni farmers protect their crops through sustainable indigenous practices.

To learn more about my work, click here.
 

Muhammad Jazm, a Yemeni historian and folklorist, played an important role in carrying out the project. Before the team assembled, Muhammad made several trips across the country looking for areas the team should visit. Muhammad is also an expert on medieval Yemeni manuscripts and his help was valuable for finding information in the medieval texts on Yemeni agriculture and plants.

 

To read an article in French about Jazm's study of 13th century Yemen, click here.

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Dr. Abdul Rahman Dubaie (right), a botanist who taught at Sanaa University, collected plant samples and identified the plants used by the farmers. He has written extensively in Arabic about the flora of Yemen.

 

Abd al-Wali al-Khuleidi (left), an ecologist, worked for the Yemen government's Agricultural Research and Extension Authority in Taiz. He has extensive field experience in central Yemen with the Dutch-funded Rangeland Improvement Project during the 1980s.

Muhammad Mahyub, an entomologist, worked for the Department of Plant Protection of Yemen's Ministry of Agriculture. Muhammad collected samples of the insect pests for later study at the ministry.

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 Where?
 
The Republic of Yemen is located on the southwestern corner of the Arabian Peninsula.
 
 
 
The Republic of Yemen has an area of 203,850 sq. mi. (527,970 sq. km), about twice the size of Oregon. The geography consists of a hot coastal zone next to a north-south mountain range with peaks up to 10,000 ft. elevation. The capital, Sanaa, is located in the fertile highland plains, with the eastern part becoming progressively more arid and stretching into the "Empty Quarter" of Arabia. The majority of the estimated 19 million residents live in towns and rural areas with agriculture and related activities as a primary way of life. The population has been almost entirely Muslim since the 10th century with Arabic as the main language.
 
To learn more about Yemen, visit Yemen Webdate.
 
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When?
 
The field project was conducted over a 3-week period in Spring, 1992 for the Yemen German Plant Protection Project (GTZ) and the Ministry of Agriculture's General Department of Plant Protection. The final report was submitted in July, 1992.
 
Yemeni members of the team enjoying a breakfast of khubz (bread) and fûl (beans).
 
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Why?
 
How it started . . . I wrote the proposal for this project after working as a consultant doing an environmental assessment of Yemeni agriculture for the World Bank in Yemen in 1991. I discussed the idea, while still in Yemen, with the GTZ Yemen German Plant Protection Project, which funded the project for the Ministry of Agriculture.
 
To learn more about how environmental assessment is done, click here.
 
Why I wanted to do the project? . . . Much of my previous anthropological research has been on Yemeni agriculture. I first went to Yemen in 1978 to conduct dissertation fieldwork on traditional irrigated agriculture in the highland valley of Ahjur. I returned in 1982 on a USAID "Agricultural Sector Assessment" and then worked on several USAID and World Bank missions dealing with agriculture and other development issues. In addition to my ethnographic research and development experience, I was studying medieval Yemeni agricultural texts and discovered that much of the information in the texts was useful for understanding how the traditional agriculture evolved in Yemen. The main idea behind the project was to combine all these areas in looking at a very specific development issue -- how to protect agricultural crops.
 
 Killing two birds with one stone: resting in some much-needed shade and taking a sample of the tree's fruit.
 
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How?
 
How do you do "development anthropology"? . . . For an overview of the subject, see the site of Culture and Public Action. There are a number of graduate programs in development anthropology at both masters and Ph.D. levels. You can also find about careers in anthropology at the official website of the American Anthropological Association.
 
Yemeni terraces after rain.
  
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Answers to Picture Question near top of the page
This pest is a locust, the most common species in Arabia being Schistocerca gregaria (Acrididae).
This particular Yemeni specimen is from the family Pyrgomorphidae.
The main Arabic word for the locust is jarâd .
 
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When you are ready to go to the full report, click here...