What is the main purpose of terracing?

1 Answer
Bob K.
May 10, 2016

It's great for rice farming on hills and slopes.

Explanation:

In China, terracing is a popular technique for taking hills and slopes and making them suitable for growing rice. Rice is a crazy popular and profitable crop in the Far East, but it needs a flat tract of land that can be submersed in six inches of still water to grow successfully. Historically, this ruled out hilly and mountainous terrain, until the advent of terracing, or carving flat shelves of land out of mountainsides.

Hills and mountainsides are still necessary for growing coffee beans, which are also crazy profitable, but only in tropically hot regions. China isn't very tropical.

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