Terrace farming, also known as the Step farming is an ancient way of farming on hills with steep slopes, mountains and other elevated regions of the world. Where the farmers cut steps on the mountains, which look like massive stairs, to farm on them.

The technique of step farming was invented by the Inca people, that lived in the mountains of south America and were the largest empire in the pre-Columbian America.

Today, terrace farming is primarily used in Asian countries like Vietnam, Philippines, Indonesia for growing rice, potato, maize, wheat, barley, coffee, tea, olive etc.

The rice terraces of Philippines are a world heritage site. The practice of terracing is also popular in the Mediterranean, Africa and naturally South America.

Now an obvious question one would ask is? Why the need to cut steps, do all the hard work? Why not just farm on the slope? Easy peasy!!

Well, one big downside of farming on the slope is when it rains, the water takes away all the soil, it’s nutrients, and the plants with it. Heavy rains just ruin the entire effort. Soil erosion is immense, the entire surface-runs off. Heavy rain also causes mudslides which makes the land harder to farm for the future.

But with step farming, the steps slow down the massive rush of water, crops are planted on each level, they have aqueducts which converge the water from one step to the other. Even if the water carries the soil nutrients with it, it just flows to the next step instead rushing down the hill.

This approach has the potential to cut down soil erosion by over 70% & enhances the soil quality.

The steps retain the moisture from the rainfall. This behaviour makes terrace farming much more productive than the regular farming techniques in the arid regions of the world.

The only demand of this farming approach is it’s labour intensive, since heavy machinery cannot be deployed on hilly slopes, it’s more of a manual farming technique. Also, is immune to the deforestation by the industries.

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