Read the passage below carefully and answer the question that follows:
For generations, the terraced agriculture of the Sukur cultural landscape in the Mandara Mountains operated under a complex ritualized calendar overseen by the Hidi, the traditional political and spiritual leader. Rather than relying on rigid administrative decrees to enforce soil conservation, the Hidi scheduled communal stone-bund maintenance to coincide with ancestral purification rites. Farmers who neglected their hillside terraces were not fined in currency; instead, their fields were excluded from the annual blessing of the millet crop, effectively barring their harvest from communal granaries. While external observers often interpreted these ritual prohibitions as mere superstition, the practice subtly synchronized labour demand with seasonal rainfall patterns, preventing catastrophic slope erosion during torrential downpours. Recently, state-sponsored agricultural extension programmes introduced modern fertilizer packages, encouraging year-round intensive cultivation on un-terraced lowland plots. Consequently, many younger farmers abandoned terrace maintenance to pursue immediate cash-crop yields. However, when unseasonal rainstorms struck the valley last year, the un-terraced plots suffered severe gullying and topsoil exhaustion, whereas the ancient, ritually maintained highland terraces remained intact.
Based on the passage above, what can be inferred about the primary reason for the success of the traditional Sukur agricultural system?
- It embedded ecological conservation within spiritual sanctions that ensured community compliance.Answer
- BThe traditional leadership possessed scientific meteorological training that allowed precise rain forecasting.
- CState agricultural extension programmes deliberately aimed to eradicate indigenous cultural traditions.
- DLowland cash-crop farming produces significantly lower seasonal harvest yields than traditional highland millet cultivation.