3
Farming on the Roof of the World

Khumbu crop production matches Sherpa knowledge and ingenuity against the limited range of possibilities and the adverse conditions of their homeland. The variety of crops that can be grown is severely constrained by the short growing season at altitudes of more than 3,000 meters and even the most altitudinally fit crops are at great risk due to frost, untimely rains, and crop pests and diseases. Sherpas bring to this challenge many generations of experience with the microenvironmental conditions of each Khumbu agricultural site and considerable knowledge of the characteristics, requirements, and capabilities of the crops from which they live. Sherpas manage to cope successfully with the risks and limitations of high-altitude agriculture by basing their farming on local knowledge of both microenvironments and the performance of cultigens in them. They consider Khumbu not so much a hard place to survive as country where good harvests reward good farmers except in the worst years. Yet for all their care they nevertheless experience frequent poor harvests. Entire crops of buckwheat can be lost, and as often as one year out of three the potato harvest is likely to be at least a third poorer than in a good year.^[1]

The pattern of agriculture in Khumbu in terms of which land is cultivated and which crops are grown in it represents the decisions of both today's farmers and the cultural and physical capital which they have inherited from those who worked the land before them. Khumbu farming today reflects continuity of knowledge and practices across many generations. Virtually all the terraces farmed today were created more than a half century ago and many are much older. The long maintenance

of these terraces, the long and careful attention to maintaining and building soil fertility, and the many long-standing practices in crop selection and care all testify to continuity in farming. Agriculture has not, however, been a static art. There have been many changes in agricultural techniques and emphases even during the past century, as I will discuss in chapter 6. But the fundamental basis of Khumbu agriculture and the local knowledge that underlies it remain strongly based on cultural patterns developed earlier in the twentieth century and preceding eras, patterns of perception and land use which Sherpas have in part evolved out of the experience of life in Khumbu and which are attuned to the place, its seasonal rhythms, its climatic hazards, its topography, and its soil.

In this chapter I explore twentieth-century Khumbu Sherpa agriculture and its basis in environmental adaptation. Here I look particularly at the selection of particular crops and crop varieties for specific altitudes and sites, the use of multialtitudinal fields, and the fine-tuned agricultural calendar that is followed for different crops at particular localities. I also discuss other factors that affect agricultural practices and the annual cycle of crop growing, from the social organization of production, economic differentiation, and state policies to religious beliefs and efforts to enhance farming luck.

Altitude, Terrain, Climate, and Soil: Perception and Farming

Sherpa perception, categorization, and evaluation of microenvironments greatly influence their selection of crop sites and choice of crops and crop varieties. Especially important are the differences that are distinguished between soil types, precipitation patterns, and agricultural growing seasons. More than 97 percent of Khumbu is considered unsuitable for cultivation due to altitude, aspect, poor soil conditions, or excessive precipitation. Most of the remaining potentially arable land has never been put into cultivation and remains today in forest, woodland, and grassland. The amount of land that is actually in fields is far less than 1 percent of the total area of Khumbu, and nearly 20 percent of this small area, moreover, is in hay.

The preferred areas for crop production have an altitude of less than 4,100 meters, a south or west aspect for maximum daily sunlight during the short summer growing season, level or gently sloping sites, and loam or sand-loam soils. Although potatoes can be raised as high as 4,700 meters, almost no land is planted with them above 4,300 meters. The major centers of crop production, with the exception of Dingboche, are all located between 3,400 and 4,100 meters. Below 3,800 meters virtu-

ally every bit of relatively flat or gently-sloped land with a south aspect has long been claimed for agriculture.^[2] Alluvial terraces, hanging valleys, and former lake beds at these lower altitudes are tightly patterned with small, stone-wall-girded, rectangular fields. Where adjacent slopes are only moderately steep these have often been carved into flights of terraces that may sweep across slopes in staircased tiers spanning up to 200 vertical meters of elevation. Terraced fields tend to be narrow and small; fields of 300-400 square meters are common and many are smaller still. Only on the rare level expanses are there larger fields, some of which are as much as 1,500 square meters in size. Considerable effort has gone into the creation of these terraces, for each is built with stone risers (tsigpa ) and stone walls are also usually raised around the individual fields to protect them from livestock.^[3] Most are constructed on relatively gentle slopes of less than ten degrees, although in some localities slopes of twenty degrees have been terraced.

Soil type and quality are major concerns of farmers and the focus of a great deal of labor to maintain and enhance. Regional soils vary with altitude, geomorphic and vegetative cover history, and the underlying country rock from which they have developed. The region is not blessed with exceptionally fertile soils. Most have developed relatively recently from gneissic and granitic parent material. The alpine soils of the high valleys are generally quite recent and thin, having developed in reaches of the region which were affected by glacial processes during the not-distant past. These are primarily entisols and are often less than sixty-five centimeters in depth. Below 4,000 meters spodosols have developed in extensive areas that are or were forested with a mixed fir, birch, and rhododendron subalpine and temperate forest, especially on northern-aspect slopes. The extensive grassland and shrubland areas that now cover large areas of southern-aspect slopes below 3,750 meters have inceptisol and entisol soils (Byers 1987c:210).^[4] Land currently in terraces was presumably claimed for crop land from areas that were previously grassland or historically cleared forest and woodland. Some important agricultural sites, however, including Thami Og, Thami Teng, Yulajung, Tarnga, parts of Khumjung, and Dingboche, are also located on sandy, nutrient-poor, former lake sites and alluvial terraces.

Sherpas have developed a body of knowledge and techniques concerned with evaluating and conditioning soils. They discriminate between several soil types on the basis of color and texture and use this categorization in assessing land value and deciding on appropriate crop selection and manuring for fields (table 3). Across Khumbu the preferred soil is sa nakpu , literally "black soil." This is the black, humus-rich loam common in main fields in the villages and also in some outlying areas where care has been taken to provide plentiful manure. Black soil

is the product of generations of effort and assiduous application of manure and other fertilizers, and indeed the soil color of village fields reflects well their manuring history and generally varies strikingly between fields adjacent to the house and those at the edges of the settlement. More common than black soil is sa seru , "yellow soil," less rich in humus and usually higher in sand content. Though generally considered to be less desirable, it can yield good potato harvests if adequate manure is applied. Sherpas point to the high potato yields of some fields in Thami Og, Tarnga, Phurtse, and Khumjung as an indication that yellow soil can be productive.

Several other soils are less highly regarded. These are pemi sa , "sandy soil," and dambak seru , "yellow clay soil." Sandy soil areas are not necessarily shunned for agriculture and can produce good potatoes when properly manured. Some areas of conspicuously sandy soils in the Bhote Kosi valley produce potatoes renowned for both taste and yields. Yellow clay soil, however, is considered hopelessly poor. Black clay soil is nearly as bad. A few fields in Khumjung, Thami Og, and Phurtse have black clay soil and they are considered to produce sparse, stunted crops of buckwheat and subnormal yields of potato. There are also some clay soil fields in small areas of Dingboche, Pangboche, and minor sites such as Nyeshe near Nauje. All of them are considered to be very unproductive.^[5]

The general characteristics of Khumbu climate have already been introduced in chapter 1. From the standpoint of crop production, microclimate variation on a much more intimate scale becomes important. Temperature and precipitation vary within the region with altitude and topographic situation, giving Khumbu a rich variety of microclimates. Sherpas believe that climatic conditions within Khumbu vary nearly as much as soil conditions. They identify differences in precipitation among valleys, precipitation and temperature differences between lower valleys and upper valleys, and high rainfall pockets in certain areas within valleys. The Bhote Kosi valley is considered to be drier than either the Dudh Kosi or Imja Khola valleys. Areas above 4,000 meters are considered to be drier than lower-altitude areas. Some places such as Pulubuk

and Nakdingog in eastern Khumbu are notoriously rainy and are considered unsuitable for cultivation. Differences are recognized in some cases between the microclimates of places that are scarcely a kilometer apart and these perceptions influence decisions about the extent and timing of crop planting. Precipitation is one factor here, but temperature and frost patterns are even more important. The role of aspect in microclimate is recognized, and shaded slopes are usually shunned as crop sites. Altitude is also considered to affect both precipitation and temperature and is taken into account in the selection of crops and crop varieties for particular sites.

Sherpas have developed a large body of knowledge about climatic threats to crops. Particular crop areas known to be susceptible to particular types of climatic problems and particular crops and crop varieties have reputations for being at different types of risk in different parts of Khumbu. This knowledge is reflected in local planting schedules and cultivation practices, as well as in religious and other protective measures.

Frost (se ) is the most common climatic risk across Khumbu. It is a major spring problem throughout the region, and unusual freezing conditions in early autumn can devastate buckwheat crops.^[6] The severity of risk to crops can be judged from the frequency of frost-diminished harvests during the last few years and the extent of damage. Between 1981 and 1987 frost caused major crop loss in some main villages three times.^[7] One farmer from Thami Teng explained that frost affected crops there in most years, although the amount of crop damage varied considerably from year to year. A single night's frost during these critical spring weeks can lower potato harvests by a third and cause such striking damage to buckwheat fields that many farmers replant entire fields.^[8]

The greatest risk from frost to both potato and buckwheat is usually in April and May. At low-altitude sites (in Nauje and in gunsa) April frosts are the main problem and are rare in the following month. For the other main villages and the phu there is greater danger in May. Here April frosts are no threat due to the later date of planting. In the phu frost danger continues even into July and begins again in late summer. Often there will be several days of frost in succession.^[9] Farmers recognize that early planting increases the risk of frost damage, but planting cannot be delayed long at altitudes with such a short growing season. Planting potatoes later will yield smaller tubers at harvest time. And the later that buckwheat is planted the smaller the crop is likely to be, for with later harvests comes greater danger from early snows. A heavy September snow can wreak havoc with buckwheat in the higher settlements. Such a snow in 1968 caused great damage to Pangboche and Phurtse buckwheat despite the villagers' emergency harvest efforts.

Frost problems are considered to occur most often when a clear night

follows a rainy spring afternoon. The 1986 frost, for example, was described by a Nauje man as coming on the full moon of the fourth Sherpa lunar month, Dawa Shiwa (generally in May), when after a rainy afternoon the night was clear. That frost affected crops in the Bhote Kosi valley from Tarnga to Phurte, and also damaged crops in Pangboche, Phurtse, Khumjung, and Kunde. Heavy frost can overnight transform fields that were green with young crops into brown, withered plots of shriveled yellow and black plants resembling, as a Khumjung woman put it, "dry tobacco leaves." Although frost damage is usually associated simply with unfortunate weather conditions many Sherpas believe that these can be triggered by human actions. A particularly bad frost in 1981 in the main Thamicho settlements, for example, is said to have been caused by an improperly performed crop-protection ceremony. On the very night that the annual rite of circumambulation of the fields was performed a severe frost caused considerable damage. The ritual circumambulation has not been performed since.^[10]

Some farmers believe that certain crops in a given place are more affected by frost than others. In Phurtse one woman, for example, contended that differences in soil may influence losses from frost or the lack of them. She noted that buckwheat grown on good black soil produces a harvest even when it is hit by repeated frosts whereas crops on drier yellow soil at the edge of the village yield little under those conditions. Other farmers have suggested that different varieties of a single crop may respond differently to frost conditions. Some elderly Sherpas recall that one type of potato grown early in this century was much less vulnerable to frost than another popular variety. Some people say that there are differences in the frost hardiness of two of the common varieties grown today. They suggest that the red potato may be more vulnerable to frost than the yellow potato since it develops a stalk earlier, but note that even the red potato usually survives a single frost. It is also said, however, that the yellow potato flowers earlier and thus suffers more from frost than other potato varieties.

Untimely rains are also considered to be a major agricultural problem. Rainfall varies from year to year in timing and intensity. Drought is not considered a major hazard. A delayed monsoon can result in poor crops, especially in the earlier-planted gunsa fields, but no major crop failures due to drought are remembered. A greater regional problem is an overabundance of rain that can lead to poor crops in the main villages.^[11] The greatest risks result from intense multiday rains. According to Sherpas there are two such intense rainfall periods in Khumbu. Yerchu , "summer rain," is a July-August (Dawa Tukpa-Dawa Dimba ) rain that lasts five to seven days. Sherpas describe it as a period in which the cloud ceiling is unusually high and the sky atypically light, but during

which very heavy rain falls. Tenju , "autumn rain," is a very heavy September-early October (Dawa Gepa-Guwa ) rain that lasts up to a week (although some people say that it lasts only two to four days). Both are rare and may fall only once or twice in a decade.^[12]

Yerchu rains are usually not a problem for crops, although some Sherpas feel that they can cause buckwheat to develop large stalks and leaves but produce rather poor seed. It is also possible that in unusually moist summers there is more risk of accelerated spread of fungal blight (shimbak ). Tenju rains, however, can cause considerable damage. Terrace walls occasionally buckle following such storms, and in the spectacular 1968 case so much runoff occurred that two houses were damaged in Nauje and many villagers abandoned their homes and spent a night huddled with their most prized belongings beside the supposed protective influence of the main shrine (chorten) of the village. The same storm caused much damage to buckwheat in Pangboche and Phurtse. Tenju rains are said to have destroyed buckwheat at Pangboche and to have also damaged Dingboche barley. Autumn rains are not considered a threat to potatoes, but they can cause damage to harvests by seeping into open potato-storage pits and rotting the stored potatoes. Autumn rains of any scale, of course, can also cause havoc with hay making.

Besides their familiarity with local soil, climate, and weather Sherpas also bring to their farming a keen sense of other environmental risks to crops. Foraging mammals and birds (including Himalayan tahr (Hemitragus jemlahicus ), Impeyan pheasants, choughs, and in lower Khumbu—although rarely today—bears and monkeys) can cause crop losses. Certain places in Khumbu are well known for the frequency of their crop losses to particular types of wildlife.^[13] The destructive potential of livestock is also recognized, and hence the long-standing practice of banishing stock from villages (and also from some secondary crop-growing areas) during the height of the growing season. A yak or crossbreed can graze a buckwheat or barley field to ruin in a few hours. Livestock are said to damage potatoes even in the final weeks before they are harvested since their trampling causes the tubers to rot below ground. There are no serious insect problems, by contrast, although farmers in the lowest-altitude areas of Khumbu sometimes lose some potato plants to a worm that severs the stalks.

Plant diseases are of much more concern. Khumbu potatoes are affected both by late blight and warts, and blight is also said to infect buckwheat and barley^[14] The greatest problem is shimbak or late blight (Phytophthora infestans ), the fungal disease that was responsible for the Irish potato famine of 1846-47.^[15] Late blight is a major problem today in most of the potato-producing areas of the Himalaya.^[16] Khumbu communities have taken extraordinary precautions in attempts to stave off the

onset and spread of blight, believing that by observing a set of bans on activities believed to affect the well-being of plants that they could prevent the outbreak of the disease or limit its impact.

The leaves of potato plants that have been affected by blight wither and blacken as early as June. The blight is usually at its height in July and August (Dawa Tukpa to Dawa Dimba).^[17] Entire Khumbu valleys can be swept by blight and in bad years crop losses can be as much as 50 percent. Throughout the twentieth century blight has been a continuing problem. Serious infestations typically occur several times per decade. In recent years there have been problems in 1983, 1987, and 1990.

Some people believe that heavy rain can encourage the outbreak of blight, particularly when it falls in late May or early June (Dawa Nawa ). Sherpas also believe that blight can be transmitted by human or livestock contact with plants during the summer and hence communities have banned farmers from entering the fields from late June or early July until harvest and have also banished livestock from the villages during this period.^[18] There are also a number of other restrictions that were once carefully observed in the villages and enforced by village officials. These included bans on bringing freshly cut timber, fuel wood, or bamboo into the settlement, construction work, drying herbs and leaves outdoors, or firing guns. These various antiblight regulations are not observed by Sherpas in Shorung and other areas and may have been unique to Khumbu.

The importance of keeping stock away from the maturing village crops in order to protect them from blight is taken very seriously. In Khumjung and Kunde, where this ban is enacted soon after the Dumje festival, some people predicted that there would be trouble with blight in 1987 because Dumje was scheduled to be held late that year due to an unusual counting of the months in the Sherpa calendar to avoid an astrologically inauspicious condition. Within those villages there was much debate over whether Dumje should be held as customary at the beginning of the fifth lunar month in order to be able to close the village to livestock as usual in June rather than in July. Konchok Chombi was concerned that "there will be blight if we wait until then to get livestock and people away from the fields." Such advice was not heeded and that summer the blight was the worst it had been for many years.

The viral disease Synchytrium endobioticum (Sherpa kongsur re, ze shur re , or ne zakpa ), often called potato wart, is a problem in much of eastern Nepal and other areas where Darjeeling varieties of potatoes are cultivated. The disease causes crusty, scab-like areas on the potato skin, and infected potatoes can rot. Once the virus infects an area it can become established in the soil and is difficult to eradicate, and it is capable of destroying entire crops. In Khumbu the problem is especially

severe at Dingboche where some people associate it with the unique emphasis on fertilizing fields with juniper needles, suggesting that this alters the soil in a way that leads to the onset of the disease. Infected potatoes also occur in other communities, however, where juniper needles are not used as fertilizer. When the problem is discovered at harvest time the usual practice is to separate infected tubers from the rest of the harvest. These tubers are then consumed first before they deteriorate further. It is considered to be very important not to mix wart-infected potatoes with good ones in the storage pits, for it is thought that the infection can spread to previously unaffected tubers.^[19]

Specialization and Diversification: Crop Selection and Multialtitudinal Fields

Both specialization and diversification can be defenses against disaster in areas of high agricultural risks. Risk can be appreciably lowered by specializing in crops and crop varieties that have been found to be particularly fit for local conditions. In some parts of the world farmers even deliberately select relatively low-yielding crops and varieties to plant rather than others with which they are familiar because they are likely to give some yield even in the worst expected conditions. Diversification may also be an effective risk-minimization strategy. Diversity can be achieved in a number of ways. At the level of the individual field farmers may plant a variety of crops and varieties rather than a monocrop. Thus five types of rice, not a single one, might be planted in a field, or several different types of maize might be grown intercropped with millets. Multicropped fields provide a buffer against risks as a result of the different climate, insect, and disease tolerances and resistances of different varieties. They may also decrease the spread of disease and provide barriers to the dispersal of species-specific insects. At a higher level of the farming strategy a household might choose to plant a number of different crops in their various fields rather than to emphasize a single staple. This prevents disaster when a particular crop is laid to waste by disease, avoiding a catastrophe such as the Irish potato famine that was based on overreliance on a single crop. A household may also choose to cultivate a given staple in plots at a number of different locations with different microenvironmental conditions rather than only in the main village. By doing so they may well avoid loosing everything to drought, heavy storm, frost, hail, or disease even when these devastate some sites. The heavy rain that destroys a crop in one part of the valley may never fall in another area nearby. And a farming family can also reduce risk at a still broader level by diversifying their household economy to

avoid the need to achieve self-sufficiency in food production. This can be done in many ways, from devoting some of their land and labor to producing cash crops and other agricultural products to engaging in nonfarm labor and other enterprises.

Khumbu Sherpas employ subsistence strategies that emphasize both specialization and diversification. They specialize in the most productive crops for high Himalayan conditions (potatoes, buckwheat, and barley) and have emphasized potatoes, the most productive of all, to a highly unusual degree. They have a somewhat narrow scope for diversification in the severe microclimates of their homeland, but they do practice some forms of it. Formerly families generally cultivated several staple crops, including a set of different tubers rather than simply potatoes, and despite the increasing monoculture of potatoes today many families continue to cultivate both grains and tubers. Although farmers may emphasize one or two varieties of potatoes, they commonly grow several others as well and are well aware of their altitudinal fitness, climate hardiness, and disease resistance. Some people intercrop radishes with potatoes. Typically families cultivate fields at a number of different sites around the village and many also produce crops at more distant sites at different altitudes. And Sherpas have also long integrated agriculture into a broader economic base which frees them from a need to depend solely on Khumbu harvests for sustenance.

Multialtitudinal crop production is a risk-minimization strategy shared by many mountain peoples. Poor crop-growing conditions at one site, such as drought, excess rain, crop disease, or insect pests, may not affect other sites with different microclimates in the same way, diminishing the risks of crop failure at any particular site. Good yields in some sites may compensate for poor ones in others. Multialtitudinal crop growing is a basic feature of agriculture for many (although far from all) Khumbu families. It is common to plant potatoes in fields at a number of different elevations in gunsas, main villages, secondary high-altitude, and high-herding settlements. Farmers testify that yields at different altitudinal sites often vary considerably from year to year. A late monsoon that may seriously affect the earliest-planted potato fields of the gunsa settlements may foster bumper crops in secondary high-altitude fields planted a month later. A year of higher than normal rainfall such as occurred in 1990 may support unusually fine crops in the relatively drier upper valleys while lower valley crops do poorly. The frost which affects low-altitude crops in May may not touch higher-altitude crops that have not yet germinated. Microclimatic conditions and crop performance may also vary in these cases among fields at the same altitude but on different sides of a valley. Differences in the amount of sunlight received at these sites influences soil temperature and available soil moisture.^[20] The de-

gree of steepness of slopes can also be an important factor in soil moisture conditions.

Multialtitudinal crop production also has several other advantages. Labor can be scheduled across a longer agricultural season than would be the case if only main village fields were cultivated (Fürer-Haimendorf 1975:28).^[21] Planting potatoes in the high-altitude herding settlements saves the trouble of transporting the quantities of food to those places from the main villages that would otherwise be necessary. And a family that has not been able to acquire enough crop land in the main village area where land is often scarce and too expensive to meet its needs may find that higher valley land is their only alternative. Many Nauje families have bought land in Bhote Kosi valley secondary high-altitude agricultural sites over the last decade for this reason.

Despite the multiple benefits of multialtitudinal crop production most families do not farm fields in the full range of altitudinal sites. Most have land in several sites in the main village and its immediate vicinity and in one of the major, secondary, high-altitude agricultural sites. Most Thamicho families also own gunsa lands, but this is not common today in the other villages and only a small percentage of families has crop fields in the high-herding settlements.^[22] The bulk of most families' harvest comes from main village fields. Usually well over half of a family's harvest (often 75 percent or more) comes from main village fields. A family that owns less than 25 percent of its cropland at different altitudes generally cannot hope to compensate fully for a poor harvest year in the main village. The relatively great concentration on main village farming today may, however, have been largely a twentieth-century development. In the nineteenth century, when the Khumbu population was much smaller and before the introduction of higher-yielding varieties of potatoes, it may have been more typical both to have more total land per household in cultivation and for these holdings to be more evenly distributed altitudinally.

Khumbu Crops

The range of crops that can be cultivated at Khumbu altitudes is limited to a rather small number of Himalayan staples. As was discussed in the previous chapter, even the lowest Khumbu villages and gunsa are too high in altitude for the cultivation of wheat and maize and are well over 1,000 meters above the highest-altitude Dudh Kosi valley sites where rice and millet are cultivated.^[23] Khumbu Sherpas have accordingly long based their farming on high-altitude-fit buckwheat, barley, and tubers. No green vegetables are grown as field crops. Small amounts of mustard (pezu ) are grown in household gardens for their green leafs and

Map 7.
Crop Patterns, 1987

several types of garlic (gokpa ) and chives are grown in window pots and gardens. Recently a few families have begun growing cabbage, carrots, and cauliflower in garden plots in some of the lower settlements.^[24] Fruit growing is still less important. Although several families have attempted to raise apple trees it has not yet proved possible to produce fruit in Khumbu. The current regional distribution of crops is shown in map 7.

Grains

Buckwheat is today the most important grain grown in Khumbu in terms of the amount of land planted to it and its place in the regional diet. Sherpas, like Tibetans, esteem barley far beyond buckwheat as a food and barley is equally as altitudinally fit for Khumbu conditions. Yet barley is grown only on a very small scale in Khumbu, probably due to the need to irrigate it in May and early June and the scarcity of easily irrigatable sites. Buckwheat cultivation requires no irrigation, and formerly it was grown in all the main villages and in the high-altitude, secondary, agricultural site of Tarnga. Today it is grown in half of the main villages of the region.^[25] Barley, by contrast, has since the early twentieth century been cultivated only in the high-altitude Imja Khola settlement of Dingboche (4,300m). This is one of the highest altitudes at which grain production has been reported in the Himalaya or Tibet. Buckwheat is today cultivated as high as 4,000 meters in Pangboche and was formerly grown at a similar altitude at Tarnga in the Bhote Kosi valley (table 5).

The Khumbu varieties of both buckwheat and barley are Tibetan varieties. The barley grown at Dingboche is a naked black barley known in Sherpa as na (Nepali ua ). This is grown on a small scale in the neighboring Tingri region of Tibet. It is quite distinct both from the bearded white barley grown in Pharak (Nepali jou ) and from the white barley which is the staple in Tingri.^[26] Khumbu buckwheat is the Tibetan variety, Tartary buckwheat (Fagopyrum tataricum ) that is known in Nepali as "bitter buckwheat" in contrast to the "good-tasting buckwheat" (Fagopyrum esculentum ) of the lower altitudes. The latter variety is the buckwheat most familiar worldwide. The Tibetan variety, however, is able to withstand cooler temperatures better and Sherpas consider it the only one fit for Khumbu conditions. In Khumbu two varieties of the Tibetan type are cultivated, one white and one black. The white variety is by far the most common. In neighboring Pharak, however, the black variety predominates.

Both buckwheat and barley are rotated with tubers in a two-year sequence. A field devoted to grain one summer is planted in potatoes the next spring. Barley has the longer growing season and is planted in the first days of April, six or more weeks earlier than buckwheat. It is also harvested earlier, in late September rather than in early or mid-October as buckwheat is. The two crops also vary considerably in the care they require. Buckwheat flourishes on relatively nutrient-poor soils and without any irrigation. It alone of all the Khumbu crops is normally not fertilized. Barley, by contrast, is very carefully fertilized and is the only irrigated Khumbu crop.^[27]

The special treatment devoted to barley reflects the high value that Sherpas place on it as a food. It is also considered to be suitable for use in religious ceremonies and offerings. Fields at Dingboche that yield good barley crops are considered especially valuable property and ownership of them is cause for pride. Although most of the fields of Dingboche belong to families from the nearby village of Pangboche there are also fields owned by Khumjung, Kunde, and even Nauje households. It is extremely difficult to purchase such a field for owners seldom offer them for sale. Indeed, even to be offered the chance to buy Dingboche barley from a family that may have a surplus is considered to be a mark of friendship and favor. In the early twentieth century there was so much concern over the quality of barley harvests that Sherpas hesitated to plant less spiritually pure crops such as buckwheat and potatoes in the same settlement where barley was cultivated for fear of offending the barley crop and losing the harvest. It was only in the twentieth century that this self-imposed ban was broken at Dingboche. Barley is also the only Khumbu crop that is associated directly with divinity: there is a local god of barley whose seat is the beautiful barley-grain-shaped snow peak of Cho Polu that overlooks the barley fields of Dingboche. Buckwheat has no such religious associations but is instead

regarded as an inauspicious grain that can be used ritually only to hurl at ghosts in an effort to drive them off. Puffed buckwheat can also be used in a ceremony to appease feared spirits (saptok ) who dwell in boulders. Even white buckwheat is inauspicious, for the shape more than the color of the grain is the issue. Buckwheat grains have three sides, a number which is considered very unlucky by Khumbu Sherpas.^[28]

Buckwheat is ground into flour and eaten as a thick porridge (sen ) and as an unleavened, chapati -like flatbread. Barley is processed into tsampa , the distinctive staple food prized throughout the Tibetan culture region. Tsampa is a flour produced through a multiday process of soaking, drying, and finally popping barley grains in a pan of heated sand held over an open outdoor fire and then grinding the puffed barley into a flour in a water mill. Sherpas eat tsampa in three forms. It can be mixed with salt-butter tea as a porridge (chamdur ), kneaded with a small amount of tea into a paste (pak ), or thrown dry by the spoonful down the throat (chamgagyou ). Sherpas treasure the uniquely rich taste of tsampa and take great pains to produce and procure the best quality. Villagers perceive enormous differences in tsampa depending on the care with which it is made and on the type and source of the barley used. Black barley tsampa has a different color and taste from that of white barley, and in Khumbu Sherpas' judgement the best quality tsampa requires that dark Dingboche barley must be mixed with small amounts of Pharak-grown white barley. Black Dingboche barley is widely considered in Khumbu to have a more superior taste than that imported from Tibet or Pharak.^[29]

Pangboche villagers note that buckwheat grown there has yields similar to Dingboche barley. Yields, of course, vary enormously from year to year due to the high susceptibility of grain crops to damage from bad weather and livestock. The return on the volume of grain planted as seed is from four to eight times.^[30] A Dingboche barleyfield of 1,500 square meters planted with ten pathi (approximately twenty-six kilograms of seed) may yield four muri (approximately 9.6 bushels and 208 kilograms of grain at 52 kg/muri) in a superb year. Two to three muri is more typical. In the best of conditions, yields are thus only 0.14 kilograms per square meter on large barley fields at Dingboche. In Pangboche some fields produce as much as 0.7 kilograms per square meter of buckwheat in the best of years. But even this is a meagre harvest in comparison to the two to four kilograms per square meter common for potato cultivation across Khumbu. Few families own enough grain land to harvest more than a few muri per year. In 1987 five Pangboche families averaged 1.65 muri each of buckwheat production and to this could be added another two muri of barley—well under the ten to fifteen muri of grain typically consumed by Khumbu households. These figures reveal the continuing Khumbu need for obtaining substantial stocks of lower-altitude-grown grain.

Tubers

Khumbu Sherpas have emphasized the cultivation of tubers as well as of grains since at least the late nineteenth century and very possibly for considerably longer. For a hundred years or more tubers have very likely been grown on half or more of Khumbu crop land and during the twentieth century they have increasingly dominated Khumbu agriculture. Four tubers are planted: potato, radish, turnip, and Jerusalem artichoke. A fifth, which Sherpas call to , is harvested as a wild semicultivate.^[31] The potato (riki ) is today the most important by far of these, and is indeed the primary Khumbu crop. Although the other tubers are raised only on a quite minor scale today, they were more important in regional agriculture before the 1930s. The white, turnip-like, Tibetan variety of radish (lo ) that is grown as high as 4,000 meters has long been a valued food and fodder crop and was once even dried for sale to nearby Rais. Today it is a minor crop grown only as an intercrop in a few potato fields. The Tibetan variety of turnip (tulu ) was a field crop in the early twentieth century, but today is only grown in a few gardens. Jerusalem artichoke (ge riki ) is cultivated only in a few fields in Bhote Kosi-valley gunsa by families who use it to produce a particularly potent alcohol.

The potato is by far the most important crop today in Khumbu. It is cultivated from the lowest gunsa to the highest herding settlements where crops are planted and flourishes as high as 4,700 meters. More than 75 percent of all land in food crops is in potatoes. In half the villages of Khumbu it is the sole food crop grown and in the others it is grown on 50 percent or more of the crop area. Potatoes dominate crop production at higher altitudes. Except in Dingboche they are the only food crop in the secondary, high-altitude agricultural sites and the high-herding settlements. Even in many gunsa they are today the only crop raised. Nearly all of this production is for Khumbu consumption and the potato is the central staple of Khumbu household sustenance.

No food in Khumbu is as basic as the potato. Potatoes form the basis of virtually every meal and almost every dish. Even the most common snack is a bowl of boiled potatoes. Most potatoes are eaten boiled, served in their skins (which diners then peel and discard) and dipped in salt or hot pepper, yoghurt, and garlic sauces.^[32] Potato pancakes (riki kur ) are popular, prepared by grating uncooked potatoes on a ribbed slab of stone, mixing these in a batter with buckwheat flour, and then cooking the pancakes on a flat slab of slate over a wood fire and serving them with nak butter and yoghurt sauces. A form of mashed potatoes (rildok sen ) served with bowls of a sharp cheese soup is also popular. Potatoes usually are the main ingredient of stew (shakpa ) and potato curry is the most common accompaniment to rice. They are also distilled

into alcohol, sun dried for use in stews or for trade to Tibet, and are made into a flour (riki karruk ) through a process of mashing, drying and stone-grinding.

The degree to which Khumbu Sherpa agriculture is today based on potatoes is probably unique in the Himalaya. Elsewhere it is more common to emphasize grains as much as or more than tubers and to grow other tubers besides potatoes. There is no simple climatic or edaphic explanation for why the peoples of high-altitude central and northwestern Nepal, including those of Mustang, Dolpo, Mugu, and Karnali base their agriculture on the cultivation of barley, wheat, and buckwheat more than on tubers and often emphasize the cultivation of Tibetan varieties of radish more than potato. Potatoes would very probably be well suited to these regions. Their lack of importance may reflect better conditions for cultivating irrigated grain crops in these regions as well as a possibly later date of potato introduction and diffusion.^[33] The strong Khumbu Sherpa emphasis on potatoes, however, reflect many factors other than the region's relatively poor irrigation possibilities and longer familiarity with the crop. Local interest in agricultural intensification apparently played a key role in the historical process of focusing Khumbu agriculture around monocultured potatoes. The process took several generations to develop and is discussed in chapter 6.

Today at least nine varieties of potatoes are grown in Khumbu, and during the twentieth century Khumbu Sherpas have introduced at least fifteen varieties (table 6).^[34] Sherpas have named local potato varieties primarily on the basis of their color, although other qualities such as shape and even assumed source of introduction can be used, as can be seen in table 6. Varietal names can differ among valleys, villages, and households. Black and brown potatoes, for example, are considered by some Sherpas to refer to the same variety. The name "English potato" is used by some farmers for tubers also known by other people as kyuma and koru ; kyuma is also known as hati .

Sherpas have developed considerable familiarity with the characteristics and performance of the different potato varieties they have introduced, experimented with, and retained as part of their crop repertoire. They categorize potato varieties on the basis of tuber size, tuber skin and flesh color, flower color, leaf size, hue and growing patterns, and growing season, as well as on local evaluations of their taste, yield, altitude fitness, disease resistance, intercropping capabilities and storage qualities. Their evaluation of the performance of the various varieties includes rating them in these various characteristics at specific altitudes and in particular agricultural sites. There is a widely shared conventional knowledge about long-familiar varieties and much discussion and exchange of insights about experiences with new varieties. Women also

often exchange small amounts of seed potatoes so that their friends, relatives, and neighbors can test new types for themselves in their own fields. There is special concern with altitudinal suitability, climatic hardiness, productivity, taste, disease resistance, storage qualities, and fodder value. Each household reaches its own conclusions about the varieties it prefers to plant on its lands, for although there is usually a good deal of agreement about particular varieties' characteristics the way in which households weigh the relative importance of criteria varies. For some households it may matter a great deal how well a variety is rated as fodder whereas for others this may not be a factor. In recent years concern with yield and altitudinal fitness have tended to outweigh all other factors for most families. The relatively high-yielding yellow and so-called development potatoes have been widely adopted despite considerable shortcomings in some other criteria, including a poor regard for their taste.

Taste, however, is of some importance in cropping decisions, as is the production of potato varieties that are considered to be good for specific culinary purposes. A people consuming as many potatoes as Khumbu Sherpas do and for whom the tuber figures in very nearly every meal might be expected to have a well-developed appreciation of varietal variation in taste. Red potatoes are widely considered to be the finest tasting (skakindi ) of currently grown Khumbu varieties and are used in

all potato preparations. They are especially preferred for preparing boiled potatoes, the dish where the taste and texture of the tuber is most savored. Yellow potatoes are less well regarded, although their generally larger size makes them especially useful for dishes that require grinding tubers, such as potato pancakes and mashed potatoes. Some potato varieties have been briefly experimented with and rejected due to poor taste. Riki nyumbu , which gained a reputation for being watery and poor tasting (shalindi ), was one of these. Many people also decided that it was bad for their health after word spread that it caused stomach pain and intestinal problems. Many families initially balked at planting the yellow potato due to reservations about its taste. As with nyumbu there were also some complaints of stomach problems associated with eating it and several Sherpas also questioned the yellow potato's nutritional qualities. One person insisted, for example, that a single load of red potatoes is worth two of yellow potatoes in terms of food value. A number of these families have since decided nonetheless to plant yellow potatoes, ultimately deciding that their high yields, better disease resistance, and good storage qualities outweighed other factors. A similar process of initial rejection on taste and health grounds and subsequent gradual reevaluation has occurred with most recently introduced high-yielding varieties of development potatoes.

Three varieties are particularly important today, the red potato (riki moru ), the yellow potato (riki seru ), and the development potato (riki bikasi ). Red potatoes in Khumbu are similar in size and shape to the red potatoes familiar today in the U.S. They have red-hued skins and a generally round form, and the tubers are typically apple-sized or smaller. The red potato has been grown in Khumbu since the 1930s and was obtained from Sikkim. Yellow potato tubers are more oblong and often much larger than red potatoes, with a lighter-hued skin and slightly yellow flesh. They are neither our russet potato nor white potato although they are often similar to the former in size and shape. The yellow potato was only introduced to Khumbu in the mid-1970s from Darjeeling and from north-central Nepal, but within a few years it had become the most commonly grown variety in spite of its poorly regarded taste due to its high yields. The tubers of the development potato are large and thin-skinned, with a deeper red skin and flesh than any other Khumbu variety. They have the longest growing season of any potato grown in Khumbu, a characteristic that at first was thought by many to be a considerable drawback before interest in its high yields overcame this and other early objections to it. It is the most recently introduced of the set of Khumbu potato varieties and was brought to Khumbu by Nauje Sherpas who found it at a Shorung government agricultural station only in 1981.^[35]

Historically the relative importance of Khumbu varieties has changed considerably. The red potato, which was the staple variety throughout the region from the 1930s until the late 1970s, is considered to be the best-tasting Khumbu potato and remains the primary variety grown at high altitudes. By 1987 it had been nearly totally supplanted, however, at altitudes lower than 4,000 meters by the far higher-yielding yellow potato and the development potato, and by 1990 it was losing ground to these even in the settlements at higher altitudes. During much of the 1980s the yellow potato was the mainstay of Khumbu potato production through most of the region, not only producing a much higher total yield than the red potato but also being planted on more land. The development potato has been widely experimented with and adopted by farmers in much of lower- and mid-altitude Khumbu during the past five years, however, and it now appears likely to replace the yellow potato as the region's main variety despite earlier local reservations about its hardiness and suitability for cultivation at high altitudes due to its longer growing season. The original introduction of the potato to Khumbu and the subsequent introduction, adoption, and diffusion of other varieties in the twentieth century figure prominently in the history of Khumbu agropastoralism, the subject of chapter 6.

Yield

Khumbu farmers have strong views about the productivity of potato varieties. They believe that, in general, Khumbu is a good region for potato cultivation and that yields in some parts of Khumbu, especially the Bhote Kosi valley, are excellent in comparison with those in other areas of Nepal with which they are acquainted. Contrasts are drawn between the productivity of different sites, especially on the grounds of altitude (a topic which is taken up in the following section). And farmers consider that the different varieties have very different average yields. The potatoes of the early part of the century, kyuma and koru, are widely remembered, for example, as being relatively low-yielding in comparison with those varieties that have been the staples since the 1930s. Of the early varieties kyuma was considered better yielding than koru, but many farmers recall that it yielded less than half as much as the red potato does. When the yellow potato was first being cultivated in Khumbu in the mid-1970s farmers reported yields that were quadruple or more that of red potatoes. This contrast has decreased in recent years, but double and triple yields are common at the altitude of the main villages. The development potato has been found to yield triple or quadruple the yield of the yellow potato in the main villages, making it by far the most productive variety in the region.

Estimates of potato productivity vary, of course, from farmer to farmer and place to place. At Pangboche the return on one load of red potato seed tubers is said by one farmer there to be about four loads, with a similar return at Dingboche. Two Khumjung farmers, by contrast, report returns of six to eleven loads per planted load in good years and a return of fifteen loads in the best of years. Yellow potato yields are considerably higher even at 4,000 meters when the gap between yellow and red potatoes begins to narrow. At Pangboche, for example, a load of planted yellow potatoes is considered to yield about eight loads in autumn as compared to four of red potatoes. At Nauje in good years the rate of return on yellow potatoes is about ten to one, and in such years most families could harvest enough to live on from planting only two-and-a-half loads. In Khumjung one highly successful farming family reports yields of fourteen loads of yellow potatoes per planted load in average years and a twenty-five-to-one ratio for the best years.

Variations in yields from year to year can be enormous. Many farmers report a range of up to 300 percent between extremely bad years and good ones in terms of the total number of loads harvested. Others note a similar variation in different terms, pointing out that whereas in some years a single worker is able to harvest three loads of potatoes in a day in other years three people working together cannot harvest a single load in a day. This degree of variability is described for both red and yellow potatoes, and earlier varieties are remembered as being even more prone to bad years.

There is also a widespread belief that yields of particular varieties have declined through time. Kyuma, red potatoes, and yellow potatoes are each said to have yielded larger crops during their first years of cultivation than in later years. Sherpas do not attribute this decline to loss of soil fertility or to a gradual loss of a particular variety's disease resistance or other characteristics. Instead they believe that old varieties become dispirited and lose their vitality and will to produce when farmers begin planting new potato varieties in their fields. People note that kyuma yields declined after the introduction of the red potato and that red potato yields did the same after yellow potatoes began to be cultivated. Some Sherpas are now saying that yellow potato yields are beginning to decline and they relate this to the adoption of the development potato. Beliefs about this process seldom deter people from adopting new varieties. One Dingboche-based family, however, did decide not to plant yellow potatoes for a number of years for fear that planting them would cause the disappearance of the red potato. They only began planting the new variety after being assured by the abbot of Tengboche monastery that the fate of the red potato at Dingboche would not be affected by a single family's honoring it by refusing to plant yellow

potatoes. Within a few years the family converted its Dingboche cropping entirely to yellow potatoes.

Field measurements of Khumbu potato yields had not been done prior to 1987. That year I attempted to carry out measurements of crop yields at a number of different agricultural sites. This proved to be a complex endeavor. One complication was the fact that harvests occurred simultaneously in the different valleys and at many different sites and altitudes. Another, more serious factor was that many people were uncomfortable with the prospect of their harvest being measured. By enlisting the help of several of my Sherpa assistants and friends in different villages I was able to collect data on yields in eighty-two potato fields in five different agricultural sites: Nauje (seventeen fields), Thami Og (thirty-seven fields), Tarnga (six fields), Pangboche (thirteen fields), and Dingboche (nine fields). In each field three one-square-meter plots were randomly chosen and marked. All the tubers within these areas were then dug and weighed and the yields totaled and averaged. Except for a few fields at Nauje and those at Tarnga, a total of eight fields, all fields in which measurements were carried out were main fields adjacent to dwellings. Such fields are almost always well-manured and carefully cultivated and they are generally the most productive of a family's holdings. There were major contrasts in yields. Average yields in the main villages ranged from 1.5 kilograms per square meter at Pangboche to 3.8 at Thami Og. Nauje had an average yield of 2.2 kilograms per square meter. The yields at the two higher-altitude, secondary agricultural sites differed still more: Tarnga, with 4.8 kilograms per square meter, had the highest average yield of any of the sites, whereas Dingboche, with 0.9, had the lowest. These yields were much affected by the severe blight of 1987 that struck fields in some settlements more than others. Yields in Nauje were much lower than normal due to widespread blight damage. Pangboche also experienced some problem with blight, although much less than Nauje. Harvests in the other locations were minimally affected by blight and are more typical of a good year's crop.

These potato yields are quite high by national standards. They bear out not only the general perception that yields are good in the region but also that they are especially good in the Bhote Kosi valley. The average yield for main fields measured was 2.8 kilograms per square meter, or 28 metric tons per hectare. This is far above the Nepal national average of 6.25 tons per hectare (Khanal 1988:27).^[36] Such extraordinarily high figures may reflect a number of factors. Potatoes are intensively grown in Khumbu, and may be better fertilized, more carefully cultivated, and more closely spaced than in many other areas. They are grown here as a summer rather than a winter crop as they are in some of the country. At Khumbu altitudes there may be less damage from some types of insects

and other pests. Disease losses may also be less. Although blight and warts are certainly factors in Khumbu there may well be less loss from these and other viral diseases than in lower, warmer, and moister areas. The moderate rainfall levels and sandy loam soils of Khumbu may be particularly good for potatoes.^[37] Tubers stored for spring planting material may winter more viably and disease-free in the cooler climate than in lower areas.^[38] And finally, aggregate national figures may be low due to underreporting or underestimating of harvests as well as poor-yielding areas lowering the average.^[39]

The 1987 field measurements also give some support to Sherpa evaluations of the varying productivity of different varieties at given altitudes. Here the data are quite limited, for of the eighty-two main fields that we were able to measure only twenty-nine were planted in a single variety of potatoes, twenty-one in yellow and eight in red potatoes. Varietal yield comparisons from the other fields are not possible since in those fields Sherpas had mixed the seed tubers of a number of varieties before planting. Twenty-five fields were planted with evenly mixed yellow and red potatoes and the remainder in various other combinations of yellow, red, development, brown, and, in a few Nauje fields, a local variety called ngamaringbu . The small number of fields in single variety cultivation makes comparisons of the relative productivity of different varieties difficult. While the contrasts are suggestive, the small sample size means that these findings can obviously not be given much weight. The yellow potato slightly outyielded the red potato at Nauje (2.6kg/m² to 2.0kg/m² ) and Pangboche (1.39kg/m² to 1.33kg/m² ). At Dingboche yellow potato yields were considerably lower (.89kg/m² ) and roughly equal to those of red potatoes (.91kg/m² ).^[40] Altitudinal differences in yields are suggested by these figures, but the Bhote Kosi valley figures serve to caution against a simple equation between altitude and yield. Yields at Tarnga (4,050m), for example, were quite high. All fields measured there produced yields comparable to the best Thami Og fields and better than the highest-yielding fields in other sites. Tarnga is famous for both the yield and the taste of its potatoes and the great contrasts between yields there and at Dingboche, which has a reputation for poor yields, accorded well with Sherpa assessments of the productivity of potato cultivation at these sites.

The average yield of 2.8 kilograms per square meter from the eighty-two fields in which measurements were obtained suggests that Sherpas can achieve household potato self-sufficiency on very little crop land. This yield can be taken to represent a far lower than average year's productivity, for more than two-thirds of the fields that were sampled had been infected by blight. For Nauje households, which typically require at least twenty-five loads (1,200kg) of potatoes per year, only 600

square meters (.06ha) of crop land planted with perhaps four or five loads of mixed yellow, red, and development seed potatoes would be sufficient for family needs even in a poor year that yielded only two kilograms per square meter. This is the equivalent of only two small Nauje terraces. A household in one of the villages where potatoes are a higher percentage of the diet might require somewhat more land, but for producing forty loads (1,920kg) of potatoes at even two kilograms per square meter only 960 square meters would suffice. In average or good years even these small farms would produce a substantial surplus that most households would normally devote to fodder for their cattle.

Altitude and Varietal Performance

The performance of a given potato variety is considered to vary with altitude in a number of key criteria including yield, frost vulnerability, and taste. Some varieties perform relatively well across the full altitudinal range of Khumbu potato cropping, whereas others are not considered suitable for fields above 4,000 meters. Those with longer growing seasons are much more vulnerable to frosts at high altitudes and tend to have much lower yields even when they are not damaged by spring frosts, perhaps reflecting reduced tuber development when the harvest is carried out in late summer or early autumn. It is also believed that at high altitudes some varieties become less tasty, and farmers may forgo planting them even if their yield would be acceptable.

The red potato and the brown potato are considered to be the most altitudinally hardy of Khumbu potato varieties and are the most widely grown at altitudes of 4,200 meters and above (table 7). The brown potato is only grown in the Bhote Kosi valley on any significant scale, but it is the main potato of its upper reaches from Tarnga to Apsona.^[41] Red potatoes are also grown as high as Apsona and are the potato of choice in the highest fields in the Dudh Kosi where fields are cultivated as high as Tarnak (4,690m); a small patch of these tubers was harvested for several years in the upper Imja Khola valley at Chukkung (4,753m). In the Dudh Kosi valley only the red potato is grown in the settlements above 4,000 meters. The yellow potato, which by far outproduces the red one at the altitude of the main villages, has a relatively long growing season and is considered by many farmers to therefore be unsuitable for fields above 4,000 meters.^[42] At that altitude yellow potato yields are also considered to decline, and some people also consider that its taste begins to deteriorate. According to some Thamicho villagers yellow potatoes become more watery when grown at a higher altitude. This same view is expressed by many Dudh Kosi valley farmers and some Pangboche residents consider yellow potatoes too watery to plant not only at Ding-

boche but in Pangboche itself. Very few families grow the yellow potato in any of the agricultural sites above Phurtse. At Na, for example, only two of the twenty-three families with potato fields grow any yellow potatoes. No one plants yellow potatoes in Machermo and Panga, sites of comparable altitude on the west side of the Dudh Kosi.^[43]

It is widely perceived that yields of both red and yellow potatoes decline above 4,000 meters, although at some sites, such as Tarnga, yields of both can be quite good even at this altitude. Although potatoes are planted in the upper Dudh Kosi valley nearly to 4,700 meters, this is very unusual in Khumbu and in general there is almost no potato cultivation above 4,300 meters. This no doubt primarily reflects an assessment of the likely diminishing returns and greater risk of such extremely high-altitude potato production. Other factors, however, may also be involved, including the lack of a need for large amounts of potatoes in the high-altitude herding settlements, sufficient agricultural opportunities at lower altitudes for meeting main village subsistence requirements, and lack of interest in producing greater potato surpluses for sale. There may also be concern that it is much more difficult to protect crops from depredations by livestock in high-altitude areas that are prime summer grazing ground.

Only a few years ago the development potato was considered to have the narrowest range of altitudinal fitness. When it was first introduced a number of people doubted that it would be an important variety at altitudes very much higher than that of Nauje due to its extremely long growing season. As recently as 1987 cultivation had only been attempted as high as Thami Teng and Yulajung (3,800m), and there was only undertaken on a very small scale and with mixed evaluations. At that time the variety was not considered suitable at altitudes higher than 3,800 meters. By 1990, however, it was being grown widely at Tarnga (4,050m) where it produced quite good yields, and it had also been introduced to Dingboche.

Other Factors in Varietal Selection

Sherpas also evaluate several other qualities in making decisions about which varieties of potatoes to plant at specific sites. The most important are their perception of disease resistance, storage quality, and fodder suitability. Potato varieties are considered to vary considerably in their degree of resistance to disease. Old potato varieties all had a bad reputation for being blight-susceptible. So did the red potato. For some years Sherpas felt that the yellow potato was relatively blight-resistant and that even if the plant was affected early in the summer its "stronger" leaves and stalk enabled it to produce larger tubers than blight-infected red potatoes would. This opinion was probably widely revised after 1987 when yellow as well as red potatoes suffered major blight damage in Nauje and the lower Bhote Kosi valley. Both yellow and red potato harvests were small. Development potatoes, on the other hand, went noticeably unscathed and fields in this variety flourished on through September surrounded by fields in yellow and red potatoes that had withered by late July.

How long and well potatoes can be stored is an extremely critical quality given their year-round role in the Khumbu diet. Potatoes are stored in outdoor, underground storage pits (miktung ) to keep them the longest possible time, and some varieties tend to spoil in these conditions more than others. The red potato has a poor storage reputation. People point out that if a single red potato tuber goes bad in a storage pit it is likely to affect all the others stored there. It is not unheard of for pits to be opened in the spring and for no potatoes to be salvageable from them. The yellow potato, by contrast, has an excellent reputation.^[44] Although I have heard of cases of yellow potato-filled storage pits going bad the general view seems to be that even if one yellow tuber totally rots in the pit the others will not also be lost. Some people believe that if red potatoes are mixed with yellow ones in a pit that rotting red potatoes may affect the yellow tubers. This was considered to be the case in 1987 by some Tarnga people who suffered major losses of their stored potatoes. Opinion has not yet solidified regionally on development potatoes, but some disquieting stories are being told of storage rot. Some Bhote Kosi and Phurtse families have had entire storage pits of development potatoes rot. In one case this involved the loss of sixteen loads of potatoes, enough to feed a family for half a year.

Few families feed large amounts of potatoes to livestock other than in years of unusual surplus harvests. The production of potatoes for fodder, therefore, influences cropping decisions for only a very small percentage of Khumbu farmers. Those concerned about fodder production, however, consider that red potatoes are far superior as fodder than other

current varieties, especially yellow and development potatoes. This has to do with the supposed nutritional value of the red potato, which is considered to be much greater than the other two varieties, and also with it suitability for intercropping with radish. Radish is also highly valued as fodder and is grown intercropped with potatoes by those families that cultivate it. Many farmers are convinced that radish cannot be successfully intercropped with yellow potatoes, for it is felt that the large leaves and long growing season of this potato variety lower radish yields by shading out the intercropped radish late in the summer and early autumn. Development potatoes would have the same shortcoming. Red potatoes, however, complete their growth cycle much earlier and die off, allowing the radish crop more light.

The Social Organization of Agriculture

Agriculture is a social enterprise as well as a cultural and economic one. Khumbu crop production is greatly shaped by customs concerning land tenure and inheritance, assumptions about the proper division of labor and appropriate forms of individual, household, and communal work, and traditions about the correct boundaries between individual rights and community responsibility in deciding how land is to be used. Some of these social values have varied historically and regionally within Khumbu, and households within a village may vary in the degree of their conformity to social ideals. Yet there are so many levels of shared belief and practice that one can identify long-standing Khumbu characteristics of the social organization of agriculture.

Khumbu agriculture is based on private land ownership and subsistence farming by nuclear households.^[45] Land can be freely bought and sold both to fellow villagers or to Sherpas from other settlements. It is uncommon, however, for land to change hands other than through inheritance.^[46] According to Khumbu custom crop land is divided equally among sons, each coming into his share at the time he establishes his own household.^[47]

All Sherpa families in Khumbu own at least some crop land. Tenant farming (pijin ), with the harvest shared fifty-fifty, is unheard of today. A small amount of land is rented (torin ), much of it owned by the Tengboche monastery, with payment due in cash or the equivalent amount of grain.^[48] Rented land very seldom, however, constitutes the major component of a family's land. Rent is usually paid in cash on an annual basis. This is generally the equivalent of a quarter to a half the market value of a good year's harvest from the field.^[49]

The State and Farming

As remote as Khumbu has been from Kathmandu government concern and supervision for much of the past 200 years, land use has nevertheless been influenced in some ways by central government policies. This has been especially true in the twentieth century when Kathmandu edicts have had an impact on both agriculture and forest use. Government tax policies, land-registration regulations, and development planning have all affected Khumbu crop production.

Since the early nineteenth century, and possibly for some time before that, Sherpas have paid tax in cash to Kathmandu on both land and houses. Khumbu families also had to contribute unpaid agricultural labor (wulok) to the local pembu.^[50] which amounted to three to five days' work per year, usually met by women working in the pembu's fields. In some societies similar tax policies have been employed by governments to pressure farmers to cultivate cash crops and they sometimes have led to indebtedness and loss of land. In Khumbu tax collection has not been used as a tool to influence crop selection. But in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries tax burdens may have accented the poverty of some households and contributed to the emigration of many families to Darjeeling, Rolwaling, and other regions. Although it is likely that land fragmentation in Khumbu and the lure of the chance for wealth and fame in Darjeeling were greater factors, taxes were certainly an additional burden.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries land taxes were much heavier than they are today. The hereditary Rana prime ministers who ruled Nepal from 1847 through 1950 had a reputation for exploiting the country's resources to amass family wealth and one of the avenues they used was a tax on land holdings. Tax roles by household were compiled for Khumbu based on an estimate of the amount of maize seed required to plant fields. In 1939 the regional land revenue was 4,000 rupees (Fürer-Haimendorf 1964:119), twice the current level, at a time when the rupee was worth a great deal more than today and income was much lower. In that era day labor paid less than half a rupee per day and rice was less than two rupees a pathi (compared with 110 rupees per pathi today). Land taxes that averaged perhaps eight rupees per family thus were substantial. Most Sherpas would have met them with the profits from trans-Himalayan trade, by working as porters for wealthy traders, or by agricultural day labor.

In some parts of Nepal the men who collected taxes on the Ranas' behalf grew wealthy and established considerable estates or were given these estates and the right to collect taxes to support them by the Ranas. In Shorung and in the Chyangma area several Sherpa pembu ultimately amassed large estates that were worked in part with the corvée labor due

to them by their tax clients. Nothing of this sort, however, occurred in Khumbu.^[51] That tenant farming did not become widespread in Khumbu as it may have in some other parts of Solu-Khumbu is probably due to several factors. Wealthy Khumbu pembu may have preferred to put their cash into trade ventures rather than into land. Land in Khumbu may have long, as it is today, been offered for sale relatively seldom. The lack of any major commercial crop possibilities in Khumbu also may have discouraged the accumulation of land. And the absence of tenant farming may have reflected the means Khumbu Sherpas had for raising cash for paying taxes through trade and wage labor (lamay ) as well as the ability of poorer families to emigrate rather than be forced into servitude by increasing debt.

The land tax in Khumbu today is paid only on land owned in the main village.^[52] The tax now never amounts to a great deal because government policies have rolled back regional tax rates to half the level of the 1940s in order to compensate for the difficulties of agriculture in the remote, high-altitude area. Inflation since the 1940s has rendered the value of the resulting taxes small indeed. Even very large (by Khumbu standards) landowners are not assessed more than about sixteen rupees per year, less than a day's wage at the poorest day-labor rates in the region. Corvée labor taxes have also been halted as one result of the land-reform measures that were implemented in Khumbu in 1965.

Khumbu agricultural land use has also been influenced by government land regulations. At one time it was apparently relatively easy for Sherpas to establish new fields on uncultivated village lands. Recent immigrants from Tibet may have first had to gain the permission of a local Sherpa pembu before establishing new fields (Fürer-Haimendorf 1979:124), or at least had to find a pembu who would be willing to place the new fields on his tax rolls. In the early 1940s, however, the Kathmandu government began to implement a national land-registration system and a set of accompanying policies that had the effect of curtailing any further expansion of Khumbu crop areas in subsequent decades. Land that had not been registered could henceforth not be claimed and cultivated without making the proper arrangements with the government office at the district center, and for many years there was a moratorium on new land claims. This prevented a number of immigrant families from obtaining land by carving new terraces near the villages or even from claiming any of the long-abandoned terraces that are plentiful in some parts of Khumbu. In 1965-1966 there was a further major change in national land-tenure and registration regulations (bhumi sudar ) as part of a government land-reform program. At this time Sherpas had an opportunity to claim and register abandoned and tax-delinquent fields. But claims on previously uncultivated land were not allowed and even the opportunity to register and

resume cultivation on abandoned land was only offered for a few years. Farmers who are short of land have sometimes attempted to get around these regulations by surreptitiously enlarging their fields or restoring the protective walls around abandoned terraces and resuming cultivation on them. Yet even these tactics have sometimes been unsuccessful, especially in the late 1980s. Officials of the government land-tax office in the district center rarely if ever come to Khumbu and given the very rough descriptions of field locations and sizes in the tax documents would probably be unable to detect these minor, local adjustments of field boundaries and areas under cultivation. But from about 1984 until 1989 Sagarmatha National Park administrators zealously enforced the regulations. Some park administrators viewed even the resumption of cultivation on abandoned terraces as violations of park control of all noncultivated lands. Here they may have been on tenuous legal grounds, for technically all the villages and settlements of Khumbu are outside the park's jurisdiction having been deliberately left as islands of private and community property within the national park in order to allow villagers to continue their customary forms of land use and to enable them to make their own choices about future development. But the several local residents who had their new fields destroyed by park staff had no immediate recourse to contest this possible abuse of power, although one Thamicho villager spoke of bringing a court case against the national park. By 1991, however, park administrators were no longer blocking agricultural reclamation, and several Sherpas had found that they could indeed register large numbers of abandoned terraces by paying some of the back taxes on them.

Khumbu crop production has been only indirectly affected by government agricultural development efforts. Agricultural extension services have been established in the Solu-Khumbu district, but the nearest office is at Phaphlu, close to the district center and a three- or four-day walk from Nauje. No programs from this office have ever been extended to Khumbu. Government agricultural development efforts have only had an impact on Khumbu crop production indirectly through Khumbu Sherpa interest in new potato varieties. A few Sherpas have visited the Phaphlu agricultural development office and it was there that the seed potatoes of the new variety that Khumbu Sherpas call development potato were obtained.

The government establishment of the weekly market in Nauje in 1965 has also affected Khumbu agriculture. So far this has had relatively little fundamental impact on crop production in Khumbu. There has been no major shift to greater commercial production across the region, and regional exchange has not focused solely on the market, for much direct barter and cash sales of agricultural surpluses among families continues. But the weekly market has become an important forum for the sale of

surplus potatoes to lodges, government officials, and families with insufficient harvests from their own lands. The continuing high demand for potatoes may be a factor in some farmers' decision to abandon the rotation of buckwheat with potatoes in order to specialize in potatoes, although this is never the reason farmers give for this change. It is also true that the market is now the major source of grain for Khumbu. In this dimension to some degree it now merely fulfills the function that earlier barter trade did. But much more grain is delivered directly to Khumbu than before when many Sherpas instead themselves hauled grain home from down valley. The convenience of this new system may have been a factor in some families' decision to give up cultivating grain and devote all their land to producing their supplies of potatoes.

Agricultural Labor

Khumbu farming revolves around family and reciprocal labor. It is extremely rare even for the wealthiest traders, lodgekeepers, or landowners to depend entirely on hired labor. This remains true today even in Nauje where the most use has been made of immigrant non-Khumbu laborers since the mid-1970s. The myriad tasks of subsistence life—hauling water from the spring and fetching firewood, gathering dung and forest leaves for fertilizer and fuel, tending crops and herds—are carried out by the entire family, with tasks for everyone from children under ten years of age to grandparents in their eighties. Some old people retire from the world, retreating to the family shrine room or a hermitage during their last days to devote themselves to religion. But everyone else works at subsistence as an integral part of daily life.

According to Khumbu social customs household agricultural tasks are strongly differentiated by sex. Men herd and perform certain other tasks such as plowing, hauling fertilizer to the fields, helping with grain and hay harvesting, and carrying the harvest to storage places. Women perform most of the agricultural work and assist with some aspects of pastoralism, especially milking and processing milk as well as handling most domestic chores and childcare. These roles are not totally rigid, and men may occasionally be found digging potato fields and women may herd.^[53] Flexibility thus remains an important facet of household-labor allocation. People do work that needs to be done, even though this may require cutting across usual gender roles. Table 8 illustrates the general sexual division of agricultural, pastoral, and forest labor.

The sexual division of labor described above means that cultivation is for the most part carried out by the women of the household with minor and largely specialized assistance from the men. Usually women join together with female relatives and friends in reciprocal labor arrange-

ments to work the fields. These reciprocal work groups are called ngalok and are organized for a variety of tasks including field preparation, planting, weeding and harvesting.^[54] Typically women from six or more households (sometimes from as many as fifteen) form a group. Each family contributes one laborer from among its members or household servants (lawa ). The group alternates days of work in the fields of its members. The order in which fields are planted and harvested depends in large part on the horoscopes and lucky and unlucky days of their owners. The owner of the fields that are to be worked on a particular day has to provide food and drink for the work group for the day. Assembling in groups makes the work go quickly, for a work group can

complete the planting or harvesting of a field in a few hours which could take the women of an individual family days to complete. It also makes the work a social occasion, and the work is punctuated with conversation, singing, and joking.

Not all Khumbu field labor is performed by reciprocal labor groups. Hired labor has also long been a feature of Khumbu agriculture. Families may hire agricultural day laborers to take their places in reciprocal work groups, but more often hired labor frees families from joining such groups and enables them to carry out the farming of their lands entirely on their own schedule. Cash wages from agricultural work have been an important source of income for some of the poorest Khumbu families.^[55] Women from these households continue to work for more well-off families at planting, weeding, and harvest times. Men work less often as agricultural day laborers. Those who do such work usually cut hay and wild grass. During the 1940s and 50s many new immigrant Khamba families relied on such agricultural day labor to make a living. Since the mid-1970s the prospect of relatively good wages as agricultural day laborers and year-round household help has lured many young Sherpas, Tamangs, and Rais to Khumbu from lower-altitude areas of up to a week's journey by foot.^[56] Some of these young people are employed as year-round household servants, but field work is one of their main responsibilities.^[57] Others come to Khumbu only for a few weeks' work at planting or harvest time. These migrant workers now compose a significant part of the total agricultural work force in Nauje. Many also work in Khumjung and Kunde and in the past few years some have begun working for a few weeks in spring and autumn in Pangboche and Dingboche. They do not as of yet, however, work in Phurtse or Thamicho. In all Khumbu villages, however, some Khumbu Sherpas continue to work in the fields for day wages. Some Phurtse people take agricultural day labor also in Khumjung and Kunde. Sherpas who today work as agricultural day laborers tend to be people who are unable or unwilling to work for the far better wages available in the tourist trade. While agricultural wages have increased in recent years, they have not kept pace with the pay offered for even the lowest-paid tourist jobs.^[58] In Khumbu trekking and mountaineering porters were generally paid at least a hundred rupees per day in 1990. Agricultural day laborers, by contrast, received thirty to forty rupees per day.^[59]

The Agricultural Cycle

The sequence of operations and techniques and the timing required to prepare fields, plant and tend crops, and bring in and store the harvest represents a considerable intellectual achievement. The annual agricul-

tural cycle involves scores of decisions, each of which can greatly affect field yields and the ultimate sustenance of the farming family. Accurate evaluation of environmental conditions, intimate familiarity with the capabilities of particular crop varieties, and command of appropriate technology and techniques are all required, and a string of activities must be carefully orchestrated with exact timing. The necessary local environmental and agronomic knowledge and repertoire of crop varieties and techniques, moreover, also has to be integrated within a broader socioeconomic context that includes religious beliefs and practices, ethics, the policies of community land-use regulations, lifestyle preferences, family demographic and economic situations, and customs concerning the social organization of agriculture. Khumbu Sherpas, like other agricultural peoples, have developed through time a complex body of knowledge and practices that shapes the form and rhythm of their agricultural cycle and makes it distinctively their own. This is in large part shared across Khumbu, although details in timing vary with micro-climatic and other site-specific conditions. This group of shared practices, values, and goals constitutes a culturally transmitted set of instructions, one that is constantly being reshaped by local experience with new crop varieties and techniques, the acquisition of new knowledge, and the development of new values and customs. Significant differences in agricultural practices can be discerned historically and even within relatively recent history. There have also long been some regional differences in agricultural practices. Today these regional variations reflect differences in community customs and institutions and household decisions based on different circumstances of wealth, labor, opportunity, and individual tastes, goals, perception, and knowledge.

Field Preparation and Planting

In Nauje and the gunsa settlements the agricultural year begins each spring in late February and early March, so early that the waterfalls frozen against the northern rock faces of the gorges have not yet thawed and another major snowfall or two may still be ahead. At this time, a full month before potatoes are planted, long lines of women begin redigging the terraced fields and the work of preparing and fertilizing the fields for another summer crop season gets under way. By mid-March potato fields are being prepared all over lower Khumbu (fig. 10). Men and sometimes also women now carry basketloads of manure (Sherpa cha ) to the potato terraces, depositing conical loads in long lines at intervals of one to three meters. Meanwhile women wielding Nepali-style hoes (tokzi , Nepali kodalo ) double dig each field.^[60] The first digging is a simple pass to loosen winter-hardened topsoil and to get moist earth to

the surface. During the second digging, which takes place several days to a week later, women mix fertilizer into the topsoil and simultaneously plant potatoes.

Potatoes and barley are always manured and special care is taken to heavily manure barley. Manure put on barley fields, moreover, is carefully pulverized first by beating it with a pole.^[61] Several sources of fertilizer are employed and much effort, thought, and sometimes cash is put into procuring them. Manure, forest leaves and needles, and composted human waste are all used for fertilization. Composted toilet wastes are considered the richest of these, followed by sheep and goat manure and cattle dung. The amount of manure put on a given field varies depending on how much manure a family has available, the composition of the fertilizer, the amount of labor that can be devoted to the task, and beliefs about the manure requirements of particular crops. Generally fields closest to the house are more heavily manured, and the richer, dark soils of these fields reflect generations of careful attention.

Nak manure is the most extensively used fertilizer across Khumbu due to its great availability. Manure from dung that is collected in late summer or autumn is considered to be the best, for at this time the stock are well fed and it is felt that their waste now has more energy than at other times of the year. This dung also has a chance to age before use in the spring, which also increases its value as fertilizer. Sherpas refer to this richer aged dung as temcha .

Fields are sometimes directly fertilized in the autumn and spring by corralling livestock in them at night or penning them there for some days to feed off crop residues. Much manure is also gathered from surrounding slopes, and in spring and autumn men, women, and children can often be seen moving about on the slopes with baskets gathering dung for use as fertilizer and fuel. In the Nauje area in the spring a diligent worker can gather about sixty kilograms of dung per day from slopes within a half hour's walk.^[62]

There is a market for manure in a number of communities where farmers have cash but lack the livestock or labor resources to obtain sufficient supplies of field fertilizers. In most main villages a load of manure (thirty to forty kilograms) could be obtained in 1987 for five to seven rupees. In some places such as Thami Og, Thami Teng, and Tarnga demand has pushed prices up to nine and even ten rupees and it can be extremely difficult to find any for sale. In the Tarnga-Chosero area the degree of demand for purchased manure makes it necessary to place orders a year in advance. This allows Thamicho stockowners time to build up greater reserves of fertilizer by placing more forest leaves and needles under their stock and composting the resulting dung-rich mixture.

Figure 10.
Agricultural Cycle

Forest leaves and needles are used in several ways to enrich fields. Leaves can be put directly onto fields, in which case they are usually first burned and then the ash is dug into the soil. This is probably done mostly by people who have no livestock and lack the opportunities to follow the preferred approach of enriching forest-floor products with dung and urine. This composting practice is very popular among Khumbu farmers, as it has been among many people who practice mixed agropastoralism in other parts of the world. It is a common technique in Nepal among middle-altitude agropastoralists. Khumbu Sherpa place great value on the use of birch and rhododendron leaves and conifer needles for fertilizer, and have a wealth of knowledge and beliefs about this facet of farming. They consider rhododendron and birch leaves to be the best resources. Both of these, they observe, rot more rapidly than conifer needles. The best of all for fertilizer are said to be the small leaves that have already decomposed on the forest floor for several years. Such leaves collected from under rhododendron bushes are preferred since they compost especially quickly. Sometimes leaves and needles are put directly onto fields, in which case the mounds are usually burned and then the ash is mixed into the soil. The usual practice, though, is to first use them as livestock bedding and compost them. The resulting deep rich fertilizer is called mandur .

Little use is made of green manures, although some weeds and crop residues such as barley stubble may be plowed into the fields in the autumn. Winter cover crops are not planted, nor are legumes. No chemical fertilizers are used. Ash, however, is added to fields. Some families set aside ash from the family hearth in a special place for use in the spring. Some, as already mentioned, also burn vegetation gathered from nearby woodlands directly on the field.

By the middle of March potato planting is underway in Nauje and the gunsa.^[63] Teams of women work the terraces, most armed with hoes and others carrying small baskets of small whole tubers and sometimes also baskets of cut pieces of potatoes.^[64] Groups of women form double, facing lines, each woman working in team with a partner. The women in one line each hold a small basket with seed potatoes in it, the women in the other line each churn the soil with their hoes, simultaneously mixing fertilizer with soil, breaking up clods, and covering the potato seeds that their partners lob into their work area. As the women wielding hoes work back and forth over patches of earth their partners casually but deftly toss potatoes into the pockets momentarily opened up in the soil. From time to time partners change tasks. The line of workers sweeps across terraces, covering in a day ground that could take a week or two for an individual family. The work as a whole is easy, reckoned by some to be less arduous than spending the day laboring in a tourist lodge.

Days tend to be short, beginning late and ending early, a contrast to the more intense pace of harvest work. Breaks are frequent for tea, snacks, and conversation with one another, other groups, and bystanders.^[65]

It is considered best to plant as soon as possible after the soil has been initially broken in the spring in order to provide the potatoes with optimal moisture conditions for sprouting. Seed potatoes, small whole tubers specially set aside from the last harvest, are the main planting material.^[66] These are selected for their small size and average only 2.5 to three centimeters in diameter.^[67] If there are insufficient seed potatoes farmers resort to cutting and planting pieces of larger tubers, which are usually planted within a few hours of being cut. Usually these tubers are simply cut in half, each half having one or more eyes. Seed potatoes and tuber pieces are planted across the entire field. No rows or beds are made. Planting is usually very dense with only ten to fifteen centimeters between seed potatoes.

It is common to plant several varieties in a field, mixing the seed pieces up before planting to create a homogenous planting pattern, then separating the types again at harvest for storage and consumption. A single family may plant as many as five or six varieties in a field. Typically, though, such fields are predominately in one or two varieties planted with seed potatoes stored from the previous autumn's harvest, whereas the rest of the planting material consists of a very small number of seed potatoes obtained from exchanges with friends and grown as experiments or for fun.^[68] Other crops are usually not intercropped with the potatoes, although occasionally families interplant radish into the fields ten days to four weeks later.^[69] Radish planting is not carried out by work groups, for it is a simple matter for a woman to plant a field herself, pausing every meter or two to dig in a heel or a trowel-sized weeding tool (koma ) and drop in a radish seed.

Potato planting usually proceeds from lower-altitude settlements towards the high-altitude sites. Nauje and gunsa planting take place first, followed about two weeks later by planting in the other main villages. As families finish fields in the main village they begin to move higher into the secondary agricultural sites and phu. In the Bhoti Kosi valley, for example, by the end of April planting is finished at Thami Og and Teng, and by the first days of May is underway at Chosero, Mingbo, Tarnga, and Marulung farther up the valley.^[70] Planting at the still-higher-altitude sites of Goma, Arye, and Chule does not take place until late in the month. The full potato-planting period may last up to eight weeks for families with both gunsa and high-altitude fields.^[71]

In a region with such a short growing season and where agriculture is carried out in so many different altitudinal and microclimatic sites, the timing of planting at particular sites becomes a critical decision. Sherpas

have accordingly refined site-specific planting calendars that integrate local knowledge of microclimates with knowledge of local crop varieties. Their intimate familiarity with the climatic conditions at specific places, the growth characteristics and fitness of different crop varieties, and the risks to plants at different stages of their growth enable them to choose planting times that minimize the chances of major damage from particular Khumbu climatic stresses. Farmers are especially concerned with avoiding the dangers of late and early frosts and untimely heavy rains. Crops planted too soon run the risk of succumbing to spring frosts. Buckwheat planted too late may be more vulnerable to midsummer rains and autumn frost and snow. Late-planted tubers do not achieve full size, and late-planted buckwheat may not develop mature grain. But other factors besides weather and the growing season are also important in decisions about the timing of planting, including household evaluation of labor availability, the scheduling of other household economic and social responsibilities, and proper astrological conditions. All decisions must be workable from each of these standpoints. Compromises are sometimes necessary, and if need be families divide forces to work in several different parts of a valley simultaneously.

Individual families make their own decisions about when to plant and they develop their own means by which to decide on the correct date for a particular site and crop. Environmental markers are often used to judge when the best planting window has arrived for a particular place and crop. Spring phenomena such as the blooming of certain flowers, bird migration, and the thaw of winter snow and ice are used in some cases. In Nauje and Khumjung the blooming of iris (themi mendok ) is taken as one indicator. Some Khumjung families note the timing of the passage of ducks en route to Tibet. Some Nauje families formerly took the spring breakup of the frozen waterfalls that drape Kwangde as a sign to plant potatoes. Most common of all is the use of sun and shadow markers. In Phurtse, for example, people keep track of the shadow of Area Dablam, a peak east of the village, on the slopes of Khumbu Yul Lha. There are three different shadow points. The first two mark the time for potato planting at the main village and the high-altitude settlements respectively, and the third, reached ten days after the second, indicates that it is time for buckwheat planting in Phurtse. Dingboche planting time is chosen by consulting the shadow of Ama Dablam as it falls on a small shrine near Orsho, between Dingboche and Pangboche. Once this event has occurred families choose a specific day to begin barley planting based on their personal horoscope.^[72] At Marulung potato-planting time is read from the sunrise light coming over a particular boulder. At Phurte, in the lower Bhote Kosi valley, people note the sun's position, watching where the morning sun breaks over the ridge.

Some families observe the sunlight within their own houses; it is time to plant potatoes when a sunbeam passes through a particular window or when light filtering through a roof opening strikes a certain standing beam. At Samde people take their guidance from the location of the setting sun.

Not all families perform their own calculations to know when a planting period has arrived in an area. Some are content to follow the lead of others, and in a particular community the judgments of certain individuals may be especially respected. Planting knowledge such as the reading of environmental indicators is passed on between generations and shared openly with others. It may change through time, and indeed must change in order to adjust to the different growing season requirements of new crop varieties.

Environmental markers do not determine the exact day on which a family plants. They simply provide an alert that it is no longer too early to plant a particular crop in a certain place. The choice of the exact date is based on household labor commitments, the decision of the women's work groups as to the order of the fields they will plant, and the horoscope of the male head of the household. Luck (yang ) is considered to play a major role in agriculture, and learned men and Tibetan almanacs may be consulted to arrive at the best possible day to plant. People also may trust to their "lucky days" or avoid their "unlucky days." Every Sherpa has both lucky and unlucky days of the week, the particular days involved varying with the day of the week on which he or she was born.

Most families have to dovetail the scheduling of potato planting with the requirements of preparing and planting grain. This is relatively simple for buckwheat which, due to its susceptibility to late frosts, is not planted until late May. Barley planting requires more schedule adjustment. In order to be mature for harvest in late September the crop must be planted at the beginning of April, a time when families with land at Dingboche would otherwise be preoccupied with potato planting in their main village fields. Pangboche families cope with this conflict by interrupting preparation of the potato fields in the main village in order to prepare and plant Dingboche barley fields. Most of them also plant potatoes at Dingboche once they have the barley in, risking frost danger for the convenience of thereafter being able to focus entirely on Pangboche potato and buckwheat planting for the rest of the spring.^[73] Some families divide their efforts once the barley is planted, with some family women remaining at Dingboche to plant potatoes while other female family members return to resume Pangboche operations.

Khumbu techniques of preparing and sowing grain fields require much less time and effort than does planting potatoes. Buckwheat requires especially little work since it is not manured and the task is usually

completed in a day or two. Both barley and buckwheat fields are plowed twice with a zopkio- or yak-drawn scratch plow. The first pass with the plow breaks the ground. During the second seed is broadcast.^[74] According to local custom men guide the plow while women broadcast the seed. The sower walks behind the plow carrying a basket or tin can full of grain, hurling seed down at the furrows with a forceful overhand delivery intended, perhaps, to bury the seed deep in the fresh earth. As often as not, however, the seeds simply ricochet back into the air. Barley fields are then smoothed by using a zopkio or yak to drag a small log across the field or else by hauling a juniper bough across it by hand.

Barley is the only irrigated Khumbu crop.^[75] Between late April and the arrival of the summer monsoon rains in mid-June it is necessary to supply barley fields with water on three or four occasions, and if the monsoon rains arrive late irrigation may be continued for several more weeks. Water is taken from the Imja Khola and led in a small, unlined ditch more than a kilometer to the head of the large, alluvial terrace on which the settlement is situated. Here the flow is directed into two channels, one running down the center of the settlement and the other along the foot of the slope on the northern side. Small intake ditches plugged with rocks, rags, and mud lead from these channels into individual fields. Here the water is led into a set of furrows that dissect each field into a number of three-meter-wide beds. It is then splashed onto the crop with a specialized long-handled wooden tool (ongbu ). There is no community management of water use. Families draw what water they need whenever they desire, even though this sometimes creates shortages of irrigation water for families whose fields are farthest from the head of the system. There is communal organization, however, of the maintenance of the main irrigation channels and their opening each spring. Each April the community celebrates kachang ("ditch beer"), a day on which all the families of Dingboche gather to worship the gods, prepare the irrigation system, and witness the transfer of office between two community officials (nawa ) charged with enforcing a set of local regulations affecting pastoralism and agricultural practices (local resource management institutions are discussed further in chapters 4 and 7).^[76] On this day each household must contribute at least one laborer to the crews readying the irrigation system. Male volunteers move boulders that may have choked the outtake from the river, while women clean the ditch that leads to the village. The new nawa choose the day on which irrigation will begin.

Planting season culminates with a ritual protection of the crops. In Khumjung-Kunde, Phurtse, and Pangboche (and formerly also in Thamicho) a circumambulation of all the fields in the settlement is performed each May after planting is completed in order to ensure the safety of the crops.^[77] Groups of villagers, monks, and village lamas carrying prayer

flags, sacred books, temple statues, and ritual implements circle the outer edge of the settlement fields, accompanying themselves with cymbols, horns, and drums and stopping from time to time to plant prayer flags and recite prayers to the local gods. The rite is known variously as Tengur, Chokor (from kor , referring to circling) and Orsho (from the practice of collecting grain from each household to finance the ceremony). In Thamicho, where it is called Chokur , the circumambulation was a multivillage enterprise and was carried out differently in alternate years. One year the monks from Thami monastery circumambulated the fields of the three settlements of Thami Og, Thami Teng, and Yulajung and their outlying hamlets. The next year the same route was followed by the head lama of the Kerok temple. Khumjung and Kunde also hold a joint protective ceremony (here called Orsho ) in which all the fields of both villages are circled each year, but the saying of the associated lapsong prayers rotates annually between the two. Phurtse and Pangboche villages each carry out their own circumambulation, which is known in this part of Khumbu as Tengur . In Pangboche the fields of both the upper and lower Pangboche village are circled.

The ritual is taken very seriously. Some of the most sacred things enshrined in the village temples are taken out at this time and paraded. Care is taken to collect grain from each family of the community and to extend protection to each—farmers whose fields were inadvertently omitted from the blessed boundaries would be very angry indeed. The costs of an improperly performed ritual can be high, for it is believed they can directly endanger the crops of all villagers.

Despite the careful timing of planting and the conducting of protective rituals it is not uncommon for May frosts to damage both potatoes and buckwheat. Different families respond to this situation in different ways. One common reaction is to do nothing and make the best of what crop survives. With buckwheat (but not potatoes), however, some families replant the crop. Good results, however, are not guaranteed by this effort, for the late-planted crop may be endangered by heavy, early-summer rains, and at best yields will be low given the short length of the Khumbu growing season. In 1986 about half the families of Phurtse chose to replant and half chose not to. That year those who did not replant had better harvests.^[78]

Crop Care

Women, again usually working in reciprocal work groups, carry out the weeding of potato, barley, and buckwheat fields. In the main villages this is mainly a June activity, although it begins in late May in Nauje and Dingboche barley is also weeded in late May. In 1987 weeding was

underway in Nauje on May 26 and by May 29 many families were at work in the fields. Weeding was completed here on June 10. In Phurtse, by contrast, weeding was primarily a late-June activity. The precise timing depends on families' assessments of the size of the weeds and the weather as well as their other work priorities.

Usually fields are only weeded once, although potato fields may, if time allows, be weeded a second time. Families who conducted a second weeding in Nauje in 1987 did so two weeks after the first. Many families also weed again in autumn before later weeds have the opportunity to seed. These weeds can then be dug into the fields as green manure. Weeds can also be useful in other ways. Some are valued as human food (lu cherma ), although one of these must be double cooked first to make it palatable. Weeds may also be used as fodder.

Weeding is considered to be one of the more laborious field tasks. This is due in part to the Sherpa custom of employing a short-handled hoe or a weeding tool for the task, both of which require constant stooping or squatting. Weeding a potato field can occupy twice the time as planting it, and weeding buckwheat is considered far more laborious than weeding potatoes. A 1,000-square-meter field planted to potatoes can be easily weeded in a day by three people, but the same area in buckwheat is likely to require four days. The time required for weeding potatoes is slowed down, however, if women also take the opportunity at this time to mound earth (sa kongduk ) around potato plants. This is considered to benefit both plant and tuber growth, but many people forgo it if their free time is limited.

All weeding is completed by the Dumje festival, a seven-day celebration which culminates on the full-moon night of June—July. After this festival all further field work was once banned in all the Khumbu villages until harvest. The Dumje rites thus come at an important time in the agricultural cycle, the point where the crops and the well-being of the villages are thereafter entrusted to luck and the will of the gods. The protective rites of the festival are indeed the great religious event of the year in Khumbu. Dumje is the one festival considered by Khumbu Sherpas to be distinctly Sherpa and it is a powerful expression and reinforcement of village solidarity.^[79] Its celebrations include a number of masked dance performances as well as daily communal feasts and nightly parties. But the heart of the festival is a set of exorcism rites that protect the village and its inhabitants from evil including, presumably, such calamities as crop failure.^[80] It is held today at Thami Teng, Khumjung, Pangboche, and Nauje, and a similar celebration (known as Chojen ) is conducted by a separate group of Thamicho families at Kerok.^[81] Since the timing of the festival is fixed by a lunar-based calendar, it varies from year to year by up to several weeks.^[82]

After weeding is completed another set of Khumbu community measures aimed at safeguarding crops also goes into effect in some parts of Khumbu. These are the regulations aimed at protecting crops from blight. It is believed that these must be activated each summer by late June or early July (early Dawa Tupka), and some communities put them into effect immediately after Dumje. They are considered important enough that enforcing the regulations was the primary responsibility of community nawa, some of whom also were in charge of enforcing seasonal pasture exclusions. While today the full range of these regulations is only maintained in Phurtse, Pangboche, and Dingboche, they were also implemented in living memory in Khumjung, Kunde, Nauje, and Thamicho. These Khumbu measures were apparently unique among Sherpas. They represent an example of close, community cooperation and the overruling of individual family freedom in economic decision making on behalf of the welfare of the community itself.

There were several different types of blight-protection measures. One set of regulations attempted to restrict contact with crops to prevent the outbreak of the fungus and slow its diffusion. To accomplish this communities banned people from entering fields until harvest and excluded livestock from the settlement area until after harvest in order to keep them out of the fields. Keeping people away from crops also helped keep fields free of bad smells that were believed to offend plants and lead to blight. Stories are told of how blight has been brought on by people passing near or through fields, who smelled strongly of soap, garlic, or milk. Many people note that this accounts for field edges near trails often becoming infected with blight, and villagers can tell tales of specific incidents such as the Pangboche case where a line of blight-killed plants traced the path taken by a villager who had crossed a field after bathing.

There were also rules concerned with preventing the outbreak of blight through halting sympathetic responses by crops to events involving the death or drying of plant material in the village area. Among these were prohibitions on cloth dyeing (for which vegetable dyes were common), drying edible, wild plants, and bringing freshly made bamboo mats and freshly cut fuel wood into the village. In some places these rules were still more stringent. In Phurtse and Pangboche no fuel wood, fresh or dried, could be brought into the village once the danger season for blight had arrived in July—August (during the sixth month, Dawa Tukpa) for fear that green wood might be mixed inadvertently with dead wood in fuel-wood loads.^[83] In several settlements concern over the importation of freshly cut wood apparently underlay customary summer bans on roof repair (and in some areas on house building). Phurtse today continues to ban outdoor fires, including burning juniper in reli-

gious rites, after the fourth day of the sixth lunar month (a date known as Dawa Tukpa Seshi ). The ban remains in place until the beginning of the potato harvest. At Dingboche this is taken another step further, and on the same day of the sixth month all fires are banned in the settlement until harvest time, including hearth cookfires. Habitation is thus impossible for more than two months. This custom is still deemed to be important to enforce. Many people with Dingboche fields were unhappy and some were outraged when the nawa failed to prevent a 1987 U.S. Everest expedition from camping in the community and allowing their porters to light cookfires at a time when this should have been forbidden.

The rationale underlying these preventive measures seems to be twofold. Some bans are clearly related to fear of contagion and keeping humans and livestock from accelerating its spread. Others are concerned with keeping manifestations of death and decay away from fields. These bans seem to reflect a concern about offending the spirit of plants by polluting fields with the presence of plant death and bad smells. They parallel Sherpa beliefs that crop plants can take offense to the introduction of new varieties or offensive species; for Sherpas plants are sensitive and show their unhappiness by withering and losing their productivity.^[84]

Harvest

Harvest season in Khumbu is the busiest time of the year, the only season when work is carried out throughout the daylight hours regardless of the weather. Women move to and from the different settlements in which the family owns crop and hay fields while men add hay (and sometimes also barley and buckwheat harvesting and threshing) to their herding and tourism work. This requires a complex scheduling of family labor across a two-month-long period and often across a variety of different locations. Khumbu families move up and down the valleys from mid-August potato harvesting in the gunsa settlements to September harvesting in the high-herding settlements and the final harvest in late October and early November of a few last fields in the main village. Formerly a number of villages as well as Dingboche enforced community restrictions on the day harvest could begin. Families who began earlier were subject to fines. This practice is still followed in Phurtse and Dingboche. Otherwise the decision is entirely up to individual preference. Household decisions about when to harvest particular agricultural sites during this time are linked to evaluations of the maturity of both potato and grain crops, communal restrictions on resuming field work, increasing risk of crop damage from bad weather, the need to harvest crops ahead of livestock herds descending from the high summer pastures, household labor resources, and astrological concerns.

The first potatoes are harvested as early as the first of August in the gunsa settlements and in Nauje, as families eager for new potatoes dig a few loads for their immediate needs.^[85] Harvest is underway in earnest in the gunsa by mid-August, by the end of the month in Nauje, and a few weeks later in the other villages. Most families have completed harvesting most of their main village fields two weeks to a month later.^[86] It is not uncommon, however, for families to leave some of the main village potato harvest to complete later, after the barley, buckwheat, and higher-altitude-settlement potatoes are safely in. By early October many families are at work in the higher-altitude potato fields of the valleys and by the middle of the month this is usually completed. For most families that marks the end of potato harvest. The few families who never found time to complete the digging of all their main village potato fields, however, work on. They finish up the harvest only at the end of October or during the early days of November, sometimes working in the snow.

Fields are mostly harvested by reciprocal labor groups of eight to fifteen women. Harvesters move in a line across a field, digging up tubers with their hoes and then deftly flicking or tossing them into lines of baskets set up ahead of the advancing team. Different varieties and sizes of potatoes are tossed into different baskets so that they can be stored separately. Tubers of the small size preferred for seed potatoes are carefully set aside. So too are potatoes that are infected with wart or scab virus; these are eaten immediately before they rot. Men carry the filled baskets in from the fields to the house or hut where the potatoes are air-dried for a week or so before they are stored.

Several different storage techniques are employed. Small quantities of potatoes are cut and sun-dried (riki shakpa ), and small amounts of potato flour may also be set aside. At low altitudes, including in Nauje, it is possible to store potatoes indoors through the winter. The usual technique is to store tubers indoors in the lower floor of the house either in open, wooden bins (riki dom ) or inside large, cylindrical containers made from bamboo mats. Care must be taken in cold weather to prevent potatoes from freezing and during bad winters hay may be packed around the wooden bins as insulation. It is too cold in the other main villages and the higher-altitude settlements for this type of storage and in most of Khumbu potatoes are put into underground storage pits (miktung ). Storage pits are approximately 1 to 1.25 meters deep and are lined with straw or juniper boughs and made waterproof with a top layer of straw capped by a firmly packed-down layer of mud. If moisture is kept out underground storage can preserve potatoes for ten or eleven months.^[87]

The season for harvesting grain overlaps with potato harvest, and when barley and buckwheat reach the correct degree of maturity their

harvest becomes of the utmost urgency. Buckwheat is very susceptible to major damage by late autumn snow or heavy rain, and there is also considerable danger that livestock, wildlife, or birds may destroy the crop. When snowfalls occur while the buckwheat crop is still in the fields some villagers attempt an emergency harvest. Rather than first cut the stalks, carry them to a threshing place, and thresh the grain from the stalks, they instead speed up the process and simply beat down the buckwheat stalks with poles right in the field. If the snowfall proves to be less heavy than feared this tactic can misfire and result in less grain being harvested than would have been otherwise. This was the experience of some Phurtse families two decades ago. In nearby Pangboche, however, heavier snows devastated the harvest of those families who did not rush to harvest what they could as quickly as possible.

When early snows do not rush the process buckwheat harvest begins in late September and lasts for several weeks.^[88] Barley harvest also takes place in mid to late September. The two grains are not equally mature at this time. Buckwheat is only harvested when fully ripe. Khumbu Sherpas prefer to harvest barley, however, a week or more before it fully matures. The origins of this custom are not clear. It may be that farmers are reluctant to risk the crop longer to the danger of heavy rains or early snows or that they do not want to delay any longer opening the Dingboche area to grazing. In either case farmers may feel that by harvesting slightly before maturity there is less risk of grain being lost during the process.

Both men and women work together at harvesting grain, although here again most of the labor is contributed by women. Reciprocal work groups are common, but some families prefer to harvest grain as a smaller, family operation. The two grains are harvested using different techniques. Buckwheat is cut with the same type of sickle that is used to cut hay. Workers grasp the stalks with one hand and with the other wield the sickle and cut the stalks close to ground level. Barley, by contrast, can be harvested in several ways. Whereas some people cut the grain from the stalk in the same manner as buckwheat, most simply pull the entire plant out by the roots. This is an easy operation. At Dingboche a group of harvesters can very quickly harvest a large field, a crew of four uprooting barley while two other workers bundle it into stacks. Men and women work their way in a line across a field, uprooting barley stalks and placing handfuls of them behind them for a second crew of women who shake the dirt off, line up the grain heads, and tie together clumps of barley with straw. These are then stacked in small pyramids in the field and later consolidated in large, outdoor stacks.

Buckwheat threshing takes place immediately after harvest. Here again several techniques are employed. Some people prefer to beat or

rub the grain free on rocks. Others beat the stalks with a short, forked stick. Often a bamboo mat enclosure is set up to keep out wind and to capture flying grain. Buckwheat stalks are valued as fodder and after threshing they are piled, dried, and stored. Barley, by contrast, is not threshed until a month or more after it has been harvested and is beaten with a jointed flail (geli ). In late October and early November groups of women carry out the threshing with poles on large community threshing grounds in Dingboche.

The agricultural year draws to a close in mid to late November. The few families who have neglected to complete the digging of their potato fields due to more pressing business now dig in the frozen soil for the final tubers, sometimes working while the snow falls. Some families also redig their potato fields now or plow the fields that had been in grain to loosen the soil in the belief that this will improve the coming year's crop. Some families in Phurtse note that this process also makes the spring's work easier, for by deep digging the soil of next year's potato fields in the late autumn, when there are no other agricultural tasks, they save themselves effort during the busier days of spring. In the spring it is then sufficient to simply dig the fields once rather than the usual double digging. Planting can be done simultaneously with loosening the spring soil and digging in manure.

Labor Commitments

The amount of labor required to produce Khumbu crops varies considerably among crops. Potatoes require by far the greatest labor, demanding a double hand-digging of fields for preparation and planting and a third digging at harvest as well as one or more weedings. Buckwheat is much less trouble in terms of field preparation and planting, for it is not manured and a few hours of plowing and broadcasting serves to plant the crop. Weeding the buckwheat, however, is extremely time consuming as is harvesting it with sickles. Barley requires more work than buckwheat, for it must be manured and provided with irrigation. It is, however, much less trouble to harvest.

The amount of time devoted to producing a crop also varies among different fields. Considerably more effort is usually put into the care of fields nearby the house than those located elsewhere in a settlement, much less those a half an hour, a half a day, or several days away. Fields adjacent to houses are usually the best-manured and the most carefully weeded. Special attention may also be given to fields in the high-altitude, secondary agricultural sites. The crops in the high-herding settlements, by contrast, are sometimes given less care. Here weeding especially may be relatively neglected. The amount of time devoted to

potato production in both main and secondary fields also varies considerably among households. Many families only conduct a single weeding whereas others perform this task twice. Some require more time and work to prepare fields because of their greater supplies of manure. A few families in Nauje and Khumjung have their potato fields plowed rather than digging them with hoes, thereby saving a great deal of labor. And the amount of work a particular family must invest in a given field also varies from year to year. Here the size of the harvest makes a considerable difference. A bumper crop may require much more effort to harvest and store. But a poor potato crop can be highly time consuming to harvest in terms of the commitment of time relative to the returns in stored food. In a good field in a good year a single worker can readily harvest three or four forty-kilogram loads of potatoes in a single day. On poorly producing land a day's labor may yield only a single load. One Nauje family farming relatively marginal land outside of the main village found in 1987, for example, that twenty-five person-days of labor were required to harvest 26.5 loads of potatoes from seven small terraces.

The relative labor requirements of different agricultural tasks and the degree of variation in the labor invested in them can be seen in a comparison of the farming practices of two Nauje families in 1987. Family A farmed seven small terraces in the vicinity of the village (Mishilung and Nyeshe). Figures are given for the five fields at Mishilung only. Family B

farmed eleven small fields in Nauje itself. Family A was part of a reciprocal labor group whereas family B relied mainly on wage labor. Family B also plowed some of its larger fields which accounts for the discrepancy in terms of labor used. For family B I have shown a second set of figures which is adjusted to show labor investments if the fields had not been plowed.

Nauje family A harvested only eighteen loads of potatoes in 1987 from its five fields at Mishilung with an investment of thirty-seven days of labor. Terraces of Nauje family B , by contrast, yielded 64.5 loads in 1987 (down considerably from nearly ninety in 1986 as a result of blight, but still far more than the family itself required) with an investment of sixty-nine days of labor. There are thus considerable differences in labor efficiency relative to yields as well as to the relative amounts of time the two families devoted to different agricultural tasks. Nauje family A devoted considerably more time than family B in preparing its fields and weeding them, but harvested only eighteen loads of potatoes with thirty-seven person-days of labor investment (2.1 person-days of labor per load). Nauje family B harvested nearly twice as many potatoes per day of work invested, harvesting 64.5 loads with sixty-nine days of labor (1.1 person-days of labor per load). At this rate of return on labor input, a family could attain self-sufficiency in potatoes with less than a month of labor devoted to the effort. Less than half that much labor would need to be spent on grain crops.