Points of View
Shifting cultivation
Shifting cultivation is estimated to support currently between 300-500 million people worldwide. Shifting cultivators include indigenous groups, who have been practising swidden cultivation for centuries as well as migrant farmers who reclaim forest areas but, unlike indigenous communities, have no intimate knowledge of their new environment nor traditional resource management system. This latter group is generally less successful in achieving a sustainable use of natural resources. However, opinions remain divided as to exact role that shifting cultivation, also known as swidden agriculture or slash-and-burn, plays in accounting for the high levels of deforestation and loss of biodiversity in the tropics. The two main causes of tropical deforestation are largely attributed to logging activities and the expansion of small-scale agriculture. But the underlying factors are complex and attempts to change farmers' traditional practices have shown that a better appreciation of the broad range of land use types, which are described generally as 'shifting cultivation', is required. But what is the future for this type of farming?
Shifting cultivation is a style of forest-based land use around which myths and hostile assumptions have often clustered, especially among
foresters. In fact, research studies on shifting cultivation in the tropics point, rather, to the strength and resilience of many of these systems,
the high returns to labour they offer; and, as importantly, the species enrichment and biodiversity conservation they allow. An important policy
conclusion concerns the need for donors intervening in shifting cultivation contexts to be much more discriminating in their understanding of the
wide range of practices subsumed by the term. Evidence suggests that traditional systems of shifting cultivation are not necessarily a major cause of
forest loss, and that greater attention needs to be given to other causes of deforestation, including resource privatisation, land speculation,
fiscal incentives for land conversion, tenurial policies and government projects which encourage short-term exploitation of the forest under
resettlement and transmigration schemes (RDFN Mailing 21).
ODI
Migrants tend to use non-traditional and non-sustainable-practices. Many are new to farming, without the benefit of indigenous knowledge about the
land and vegetation, and they indiscriminately clear forest areas, leaving no tree stumps to regenerate. They often plant crops that are unsuited to
the acid soils and the hot, humid climate. Migrant farmers continue to crop after grass weeds have established themselves, further exhausting the
soil so that recovery time is lengthened, hindering forest regeneration.
Alternatives to Slash-and-Burn - A Global Inititative, ICRAF publication
Governments have not been successful in dealing with swidden systems nor in coming up with solutions. There is a need to empower local communities
to participate more fully in problem diagnosis and in generating innovations for more sustainable agroecosystem productivity and ultimately to manage
their own resource base.
IDRC, Comparative Analysis on Shifting Cultivation
Swidden cultivation, as an indigenous knowledge system of the mountain people in this region, should be studied and documented thoroughly, and an
overall assessment of the situation made, as swidden can be a useful component of rural development and environmental management in the Himalayan
Region.
Swidden Agriculture and Indigenous Knowledge in the Eastern Himalayas, ICIMOD
Upland people practising various types of shifting cultivation are also being forced to reduce traditionally maintained fallow periods and are
clearing more forest lands to compensate for losses in food supply. While the plight of mountain people is unmistakably getting worse; it appears
that development policies have been highly insensitive to mountain conditions and have also contributed to some of these problems.
The need for sustainable solutions is urgent. Efforts are needed at different levels and with the growing partnership at different levels, important
breakthroughs are being made in different areas. Most of these success stories are being produced by the mountain people themselves with a little bit
of help from outside. The future of the mountains lies in ensuring that the maximum numbers of people are supported to help themselves.
The Hindu Kush-Himalayas: Finding Sustainable Solutions, International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development
Forest fires in Indonesia are almost always caused by human activity - mostly the result of shifting cultivation or slash-and-burn techniques used
by forest dwellers to clear agricultural land. But fire is also used by plantation companies because it is considered the cheapest way to clear the
land and prepare and fertilise the soil for cash crops such as palm oil and rubber. The use of fire to clear forest land is officially forbidden, but
the ban is routinely violated by plantation and timber companies. Shifting cultivation is not new - the Dayak people, an indigenous tribe in
Kalimantan, have been using the method for centuries. But, unlike the companies, they have strict traditional rules governing the use of fire.
PANOS News Brief
As an improved system, alley farming has various advantages over the bush fallow system (including continuous cropping over short-term cropping),
but many require more labour input at critical cropping periods. However, on-farm research results have shown that with timely operations, the total
labour requirements for managing alley farming fields can be lower than that for managing fields under the traditional slash-and-burn cultivation
system.
'Alley Farming' Macmillian/CTA/ITTA publication (see In Print)
There is still some potentially good unused land, which is gradually being taken into cultivation, and the task is to ensure that this is done in
a careful and efficient way so that its productivity is maximised. This would apply to some land in long-term fallow with shifting cultivation, some
forest and some savanna land, much being in South America. However, even there, the new land very often has constraints that make it expensive to
bring into cultivation, and make intensification of existing farmland more attractive.
CIFOR Workshop report on Integrated Natural Resources Management
Though not entirely new in conception, complex multistrata agroforests (e.g damar and rubber agroforests of Indonesia) are an emerging and
constantly evolving land use system which, in its modern form, is both profitable for smallholder farmers and biodiverse. It is achieved by enriching
and extending the normal fallow of swidden agriculture. This enriched fallow can either become a permanent perennial crop system, or have a
lengthened duration, in which commercially important tree species provide cash income, as well as other economic, social and environmental benefits.
Sustainable Agroforestry Paper, R.B. Leakey, ITE (UK), G. Michon and H de Foresta, ORSTOM/CIFOR
Until ways are found to address the institutional and legal constraints in a manner acceptable to the shifting cultivators, those responsible for
development interventions may be better advised to support innovative capabilities within the constraints of their existing land use systems rather
than attempt to introduce alternative systems of permanent cultivation with uncertain environmental and social effects. Above all, interventions
should not be driven by the many myths surrounding shifting cultivation, but should be based upon a more differentiated and location-specific
assessment of the evidence.
ODI Natural Resources Perspective No. 29
