Abstract
Soil erosion is considered as a serious threat to agricultural development in developing countries. Soil and water conservation measures, such as terraces, are often promoted to combat soil erosion and to increase agricultural production. In this paper, the short-term impact of bench terraces, 2–4 years after their establishment, on soil properties and maize yield in the Peruvian Andes is analysed and discussed. The results show that bench terraces did not result in any short term change in soil properties, such as fertility or infiltration capacity. Nevertheless, the bench terraces resulted in 20% higher yields, due to a higher planting density, compared with adjacent sloping fields. However, this increase in yield was nullified by the loss of area occupied by the bench terraces. Bench terraces should therefore be accompanied with other measures to intensify agriculture, such as irrigation or cash crops, to improve the profitability and uptake of bench terraces in the Andes.
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Acknowledgments
This publication is an output from a research project financially supported by the Netherlands Foundation for the Advancement of Tropical Research (WOTRO). We thank Esmee van Strien and Renzo Nuñez for their assistance in data collection. The comments of anonymous reviewers are greatly appreciated and improved this paper considerably. The information provided and the views expressed are the sole responsibility of the authors.
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Posthumus, H., Stroosnijder, L. To terrace or not: the short-term impact of bench terraces on soil properties and crop response in the Peruvian Andes. Environ Dev Sustain 12, 263–276 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-009-9193-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-009-9193-4