Shifting cultivation
Is an agricultural system in which plots of land are cultivated temporarily then abandoned and allowed to revert to their natural vegetation while the cultivator moves on to another plot the period of cultivation is usually terminated when the soil shows signs of exhaustion or more commonly when the field is overrun by weeds the length of time that a field is cultivated is usually shorter than the period over which the land is allowed to regenerate by line follow this technique is often used in LEDCs or Li si s of these cultivators many use a practice of slash and burn is one element of their farming cycle others employ land clearing without any burning and some cultivators are purely migratory and do not use any cyclic ulm Etha don a given plot sometimes no slashing at all is needed where re-growth is purely of grasses an outcome not uncommon.
When soils are near exhaustion in need to lie fallow advantages - of slash-and-burn method slash-and-burn is a very sustainable technique it differs a lot from commercial farming because once the trees are burned there is very fertile fine ash that deposits along the houmous meaning that by the time the other fields are burned the soil has time to reassemble nutriments in order to make cultural activity possible although slash-and-burn is a very useful technique there are other ways of fertilising soil by planting beans the soil will regenerate much faster due to the production of nitrogen in their roots political ecology of shifting cultivation shifting cultivation is a form of Agriculture or a cultivation system in which at any particular point in time a minority of fields are in cultivation and a majority are in various stages of natural re-growth over time fields are cultivated for a relatively short time and allowed to recover or are followed.
For a relatively long time eventually a previously cultivated field will be cleared of the natural vegetation and planted and crops again fields in established and stable shifting cultivation farming systems are cultivated and followed cyclically type of farming is cool jamming in India fallow fields are not unproductive during the fallow period shifting cultivators use the successive vegetation species widely for timber for fencing and construction firewood patching ropes clothing tools carrying devices and medicines it is common for fruit and nut trees to be planted in fallow fields to the extent that parts of some fellows are.
In fact orchards soil enhancing shrub or tree species may be planted or protected from slashing or burning and fallows many of these species have been shown to fix nitrogen fallows commonly contain plants that attract birds and animals and are important for hunting but perhaps most importantly tree fellows protect soil against physical erosion and draw nutrients to the surface from deep in the soil profile the relationship between the time the land is cultivated and the time it is followed are critical to the stability of shifting cultivation systems these parameters determine whether or not.
The shifting cultivation farming system - as a whole suffers a net loss of nutrients over time a system in which there is a net loss of nutrients with each cycle will eventually lead to a degradation of resources unless actions are taken to arrest the losses in some cases soil can be irreversibly exhausted in less than a decade the longer a field is cropped the greater the loss of soil organic matter cation exchange capacity and in nitrogen and phosphorus the greater the increase in acidity the more likely soil porosity and infiltration capacity is reduced and the greater the loss of seeds of naturally occurring plant species from soil seed banks in a stable shifting cultivation system.
The fallow is long enough for the natural vegetation to recover to the state that it was in before it was cleared and for the soil to recover to the condition it was in before cropping began during fallow period.
Soil temperatures - are lower wind and water erosion is much reduced nutrient cycling becomes closed again nutrients are extracted from the subsoil soil fauna decreases acidity is reduced soil structure texture and moisture characteristics improve and seed bank are replenished the secondary forests created by shifting cultivation are commonly richer in plant and animal resources useful to humans than primary forests even though they are much less.
Bio diverse shifting cultivators view the forest as an agricultural landscape of fields at various stages in a regular cycle people are used to living in forests cannot see the fields for the trees rather they perceive an apparently chaotic landscape in which trees are cut and burned randomly and so they characterised shifting cultivation as a ephemeral or a euro pre-agricultural a euro unregistered trademark as a euro primitive via euro unregistered trademark and as a stage to be progressed beyond shifting agriculture is none of these things stable shifting cultivation systems are highly variable closely adapted to micro environments and are carefully managed by farmers.
During both the cropping and fallow stages shifting cultivators may possess a highly developed knowledge and understanding of their local environments and of the crops and native plant species they exploit complex and highly adaptive land tenure systems sometimes exist under shifting cultivation introduced crops for food and this cash have been skill fully integrated into some shifting cultivation systems shifting cultivation.
In Europe shifting cultivation farming
It was still being practised as a viable and stable form of Agriculture in many parts of Europe and east into Siberia at the end of the 19th century and in some places well into the 20th century in the Ruhr in the late 1860's a forest field rotation system known as what Berg wirtschaft was using a 16 year cycle of clearing cropping and following with trees to produce bark for tanneries wood for charcoal and rifle flour Sweden farming was practised in Siberia at least until the 1930s using specially selected varieties of a euro OS we didn't really owe in Eastern Europe and northern Russia the main Sweden crops with turnips barley flax rye wheat oats radishes and millet cropping periods were usually one year.
But were extended to two or three years on very favourable soils fallow periods were between 20 and 40 years in Finland in 1949 Steen's Berg observed the clearing and burning of a 60,000 square metre Sweden 440 kilometres north of Helsinki birch and pine trees had been cleared over a period of a year and the logs sold for cash a fallow of alder was encouraged to improve soil conditions after the Bern turnip was sown for sale and for cattle feed shifting cultivation was disappearing in this part of Finland because of a loss of agricultural labour to the industries of the towns.
Steen's Berg provides eyewitness descriptions of shifting cultivation being practised in Sweden in the 20th century and in Estonia Poland the Caucasus Serbia Bosnia Hungary Switzerland Austria and Germany in the 1930s to the 1950s that these agricultural practises survived from the Neolithic into the middle of the 20th century amidst the sweeping changes that occurred in Europe over that period suggest they were adaptive and in themselves were not massively destructive of the environments.
In which they were practised this raises the question if shifting cultivation farming did not lead to the disappearance of European forests what did the earliest written accounts of forest destruction in southern Europe begin around 1000 BC in the histories of Homer lucidity Xin Plato and in strobo a euro on registered trademark s geography forests were exploited for shipbuilding and urban development the manufacture of casks pitch and charcoal as well as being cleared for agriculture the intensification of trade and as a result of warfare increased the demand for ships which were manufactured completely from forest products although goat herding has singled out as an important cause of environmental degradation and more important cause of forest destruction was the practice in some places of granting ownership rights to those who clear felled forests and brought the land into permanent cultivation evidence that circumstances other than agriculture were the major causes.
Forest destruction
The recovery of tree cover in many parts of the room Empire from 400 BC to around 500 AD following the collapse of Roman economy and industry Darby observes that by 400 AD a euro island that had once been tilled became derelict and overgrown a euro and quotes lactantius who wrote that in many places a euro or a cultivated land became forest a euro the other major cause of forest destruction in the Mediterranean environment with its hot dry summers will wildfires that became more common following human interference in the forests in central and northern Europe the use of stone tools and fire and agriculture is well established.
In the palan illogical and archaeological record from the neolithic here just as in southern europe the demands of more intensive agriculture and the invention of the plough trading mining and smelting tanning building and construction in the growing towns and constant warfare including the demands of naval shipbuilding were more important forces behind the destruction of the forests than was shifting agriculture by the Middle Ages in Europe large areas of forest were being cleared and converted into arable land in association with the development of feudal to muriël practises from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries the demands of iron smelters for charcoal increasing industrial developments and the discovery and expansion of colonial empires as well as incessant warfare.
That increased the demand for shipping to levels never previously reached all combined to De-Forest Europe with the loss of the forests so shifting cultivation became restricted to the peripheral places of Europe where permanent agriculture was an economic transport costs constrained logging or terrain prevented the use of draft animals or tractors it has disappeared from even these refugees since 1945 as agriculture has become increasingly capital intensive rural areas have become depopulated and the remnant European forests themselves have been revalued economically and socially simple societies shifting agriculture.
Environmental change
A growing body of pal analogical evidence finds that simple human societies brought about extensive changes to their environments before the establishment of any sort of state feudal or capitalist and before the development of large-scale mining smelting or shipbuilding industries in these societies agriculture was the driving force in the economy and shifting cultivation was the most common type of agriculture practised by examining the relationships between social and economic change and agricultural change in these societies insights can be gained on contemporary social and economic change and global environment change and the place of shifting cultivation in those relationship as early as 1930 questions about relationships between the rise and fall of the Mayan civilization of the Yucatan Peninsula and shifting cultivation were raised and continued to be debated today archaeological evidence suggests the development of Mayan society and economy began around 250 AD a mere 700 years later it reached its Apogee by which time the population may have reached 2 million people there followed a precipitous decline that left the great cities and ceremonial centres vacant an overgrown with jungle vegetation the causes of this decline are uncertain but wool fur and the exhaustion of agricultural land are commonly cited more recent work suggests the Maya may have in suitable places developed irrigation systems and more intensive agricultural practises similar paths appear to have been followed by Polynesian settlers in New Zealand.
And the Pacific Islands who within 500 years of their arrival around 1100 AD turned substantial areas from forests into scrub and fern and in the process caused the elimination of numerous species of birds and animals in the restricted environments of the Pacific Islands including Fiji and Hawaii early extensive erosion and change of vegetation is presumed to have been caused by shifting agriculture on slopes soils washed from slopes were deposited in valley bottoms as a rich swampy alluvium these new environments were,
Then exploited to develop intensive irrigated fields the change from shifting cultivation to intensive irrigated fields occurred in association with a rapid grow in population in the development of elaborate and highly stratified chiefdoms in the larger temperate latitude islands of New Zealand the presumed course of events took a different path there the stimulus for population growth was the hunting of large birds to extinction during which time forests in drier areas were destroyed by burning followed the development of intensive agriculture and favourable environments based mainly on sweet potato and a reliance on the gathering of two main while plant species and less favourable environments these changes as in the smaller islands were accompanied by population growth.
The competition for the occupation of the best environments complexity and social organisation and endemic warfare the record of humanely induced changes in environments is longer in new guinea than in most places agricultural activities probably began 5,000 to 9,000 years ago however the most spectacular changes in both societies and environments are believed to have occurred in the central highlands of the island within the last 1,000 years in association with the introduction of a crop new to New Guinea the sweet potato one of the most striking signals of the relatively recent intensification of Agriculture is the sudden increase in sedimentation rates in small lakes the root question posed by v's in the numerous other examples that could be cited of simple societies that have intensified their agricultural systems.
In association with increases in population and social complexity is not whether or how shifting cultivation was responsible for the extensive changes to landscapes and environments rather it is why simple societies of shifting cultivators in the tropical forests of yokota N or the highlands of New Guinea began to grow in numbers and to develop stratified and sometimes complex social hierarchies at first sight the greatest stimulus to the intensification of a shifting agriculture system is a growth in population if no other changes occur within the system for each extra person to be fed from the system a small extra amount of land must be cultivated the total amount of land available is the land being presently cropped and all of the land in follow if the area occupied by the system is not expanded into previously unused land.
Then either the cropping period must be extended or the fallow period shortened at least two problems exist with a population growth hypothesis first population growth in most pre-industrial shifting cultivators societies has been shown to be very low over the long term second no human societies are known where people work only to eat people engage in social relations with each other and agricultural produce is used in the conduct of these relationships these relationships are the focus of two attempts to understand the nexus between human societies.
And their environments one an explanation of a particular situation and the other a general exploration of the problem equals one feedback loops equals in a study of the Doudna in the southern highlands of New Guinea a group in the process of moving from shifting cultivation into permanent field agriculture post sweet-potato modscan argued for the development of tool a euro OE self amplifying feedback loops our euro of ecological and social causation the trigger to the changes was very slow population growth and the slow expansion of Agriculture to meet the demands of this growth this set in motion the first feedback loop the a euro lose.
Value a euro loop as more forest was cleared there was a decline in wild food resources and protein produced from hunting which was substituted for by an increase in domestic pig raising an increase in domestic pigs required a further expansion in agriculture the greater protein available from the larger number of pigs increased human fertility and survival rates and resulted in faster population growth the outcome of the operation of the two loops one bringing about ecological change and the other social and economic change is an expanding and intensifying agricultural system the conversion of forest to grassland a population growing at an increasing rate and expanding geographically and a society.
That is increasing in complexity and vacation equals two resources a cultural appraisals equals the second attempt to explain the relationships between simple agricultural societies and their environments is that of Ellen Ellen does not attempt to separate his values from social production he argues that almost all of the materials required by humans to live are obtained through social relations of production.
And that these relations proliferate and are modified in numerous ways the values that humans attribute to items produced from the environment arise out of cultural arrangements and not from the objects themselves a restatement of Karl saw a euro unregistered trademark as dictum that a Euro OE resource is a cultural appraisal siguro humans frequently translate actual objects into culturally. conceived forms an example being the translation by the Doudna of the pig into an item of compensation and redemption as a result two fundamental processes underlie the ecology of human social systems first the obtaining of materials from.
The environment and their alteration in circulation through social relations and second giving the material a value which will affect how important it is to obtain it circulate it or alter it environmental pressures are thus mediated through social relations transitions and ecological systems and in social systems do not proceed at the same rate the rate of phylogenetic change is determined mainly by natural selection and partly by human interference and adaptation such as for example the domestication of a wild species humans however have the ability to learn and to communicate their knowledge to each other and across generations if most social systems have the tendency to increase in complexity.
They will sooner or later come into conflict with or into a euro a contradiction a euro with their environments what happens around the point of a euro a contradiction a euro will determine the extent of the environmental degradation that will occur of particular importance is the ability of the society to change to invent or to innovate technologically and sociologically in order to overcome the a euro we can diction a euro without incurring continuing environmental degradation or social disintegration an economic study of what occurs at the points of conflict with specific reference to shifting cultivation is that of ester boserup Bazarov argues that low intensity farming extensive shifting cultivation for example has lower labour costs than more intensive farming systems this assertion remains controversial she also argues that given a choice a human group will always choose the technique.
Which is the lowest absolute labour cost rather than the highest yield but at the point of conflict yields will have become unsatisfactory basura par gives contra Malthus that rather than population always overwhelming resources that humans will invent a new agricultural technique or adopt an existing innovation that will boost yields and that is adapted to the new environmental conditions created by the degradation which has occurred already even though they will pay for the increases in higher labour costs examples of such changes of the adoption.
New higher yielding crops
The exchanging of a digging stick for a hoe or a hoe for a plough or the development of irrigation systems the controversy over bazaar per euro unregistered trademark as proposal is in part over weather intensive systems are more costly in labour terms and whether humans will bring about change in their agricultural systems before environmental degradation forces them to shifting cultivation in the contemporary world and global environmental change the estimated rate of deforestation in Southeast Asia in 1990 was 34,000 miles squared per year in Indonesia alone it was estimated 13,000 100 miles squared per year were being lost 3,680 Kumar's squared per year from Sumatra and 3770 Kumar's squared from Kalimantan of which 1440 kamal squared were due to the fires of 1982 to 1983 since.
Those estimates were made huge fires of ravaged indonesian forests during the 1997 to 1998 el NiO plus or minus o associated droughts equals interdisciplinary project equals shifting cultivation used to be the backbone of smallholder agriculture throughout the tropics but today it is abandoned in many places in favour of large-scale cash crop production a euro for example for bio-fuels the extent of these changes is not well documented because shifting cultivation land rarely appears on official maps and census data seldom identifies shifting cultivators.
Moreover the consequences of these changes for livelihoods are not well known the aim of this project is to analyse the extent and consequences of change in shifting cultivation by combining meta-analyses of existing studies and census data with case studies in selected areas this interdisciplinary project focuses on trends in change and shifting cultivation landscapes and demography and changes in livelihoods due to these changes the project will compile data for 8 countries and the outcome is expected to be relevant to planning and policymaking on land and forest management.
Shifting cultivation
was assessed by the FAO to be one of causes of deforestation while logging was not the apparent discrimination against shifting cultivators caused a confrontation between FAO and environmental groups who saw the FAO supporting commercial logging interests against the rights of indigenous people other independent studies of the problem note that despite lack of government control over forests and the dominance of a political elite in the logging industry the causes of deforestation are more complex the loggers have provided paid employment to former subsistence farmers one of the outcomes of cash incomes has been rapid population growth among indigenous groups of former shifting cultivators that has placed pressure on their traditional long fallow farming systems many farmers have taken advantage of the improved road access to urban areas by planting cash crops such as rubble pepper as noted above increased cash incomes.
Often are spent on chainsaws which have enabled larger areas to be cleared for cultivation fallow periods have been reduced in cropping periods standard serious poverty elsewhere in the country has pulled thousands of land-hungry settlers into the cutover forests along the logging roads the settlers practice what appears to be shifting cultivation but which is in fact a one cycle slash-and-burn followed by continuous cropping with no intention to long fallow clearing of trees and the permanent cultivation of fragile soils in a tropical environment with little attempt to replace lost nutrients may cause rapid degradation of the fragile soils the loss of forests in Indonesia.
Thailand and the Philippines during the 1990s was preceded by major ecosystem disruptions in Vietnam Laos and Cambodia in the 1970s and 1980s caused by warfare forests were sprayed with differents thousands of rural forest dwelling people up roots from their homes and moved and roads driven into previously isolated areas the loss of the tropical forests of Southeast Asia is the particular outcome of the general possible outcomes described by ellen when small local ecological and social systems become part of larger system when the previous relatively stable ecological relationships are destabilised degradation can occur rapidly similar descriptions of the loss of forest and destruction of fragile ecosystems could be provided from the Amazon basin by large-scale state-sponsored colonisation forest land or from the Central Africa where what endemic armed conflict is destabilising rural settlement and farming communities on a massive scale comparison with other ecological phenomena in the tropical developing.
World shifting cultivation in its many diverse forms remains a pervasive practice shifting cultivation was one of the very first forms of agriculture practised by humans and its survival into the modern world suggests that it is a flexible and highly adaptive means of production however it is also a grossly misunderstood practice any casual observers cannot see past the clearing and burning of standing forest and do not perceive often ecologically stable cycles of cropping and following nevertheless shifting cultivation systems are particularly susceptible to rapid increases in population and to economic and social change in the larger world.
Around them the blame for the destruction of forest resources is often laid on shifting cultivators but the forces bringing about the rapid loss of tropical forests at the end of the 20th century are the same forces that led to the destruction of the forests of Europe urbanisation industrialization increased affluence population growth and geographical expansion and the application the latest technology to extract ever more resources from the environment in pursuit of wealth and political power by competing groups however we must know that.
Those who practice agriculture are at the receiving end of the social stratum studies of small isolated and pre-capitalist groups and their relationships with their environments suggests that the roots of the contemporary problem lie deep in human behavioural patterns for even in these simple societies competition and conflict can be identified as the main force driving them into contradiction with their environments alternative practice in the pre-columbian amazon basin /and char as opposed to slash-and-burn may create self-perpetuating soil fertility that supports sedentary agriculture but the society so sustained may still be overturned as above see also agro ecology crop rotation Inga alley cropping Mempa references equals-- bibliography equals-- Anderson a prehistoric polynesian impact on the new zealand environment Tehan yahoo historical ecology in the pacific islands.
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