NGO and government personnel endorsed raised fields as homegrown sustainable development. The national and international press overpromoted raised fields as the solution to rural poverty in the Andes and elsewhere. By the 1990s criticism of raised field projects and reports of the abandonment of recently rehabilitated fields began to appear and the sustainability and appropriateness of raised fields and other traditional Andean farming systems was questioned. I am convinced that if certain policies and strategies are promoted, raised field technology is sound and sustainable.
The experiments demonstrated that raised fields have relatively high productivity and are probably capable of sustained yields under good management. Farmers that have continued to maintain rehabilitated raised fields in Peru and Bolivia are encouraging indications of success.6 The archaeological record shows that raised fields sustained huge populations, provided the basis for complex sociopolitical institutions, and were used for more than two thousand years; thus raised fields are an indigenous, time-tested, environmentally appropriate technology. Detailed cost-benefit analyses show
that raised fields are economically sound (PIWA 1994).