In which of the countries, the slash and burn is known as Shifting Cultivation.
In shifting cultivation, a plot of land is temporarily cultivated, then abandoned, and the fallow vegetation is allowed to grow on another plot.When the field is overrun by weeds or when the soil shows signs of exhaustion, the period of cultivation is usually terminated.The length of time that a field is cultivated is usually shorter than the time the land can be regenerated.This technique is used in low income countries.Slash-and-burn is one element of the farming cycle in some areas.Some people use land clearing without burning and others don't use any method at all.When soils are near exhaustion and need to lie fallow, sometimes no slashing is needed where regrowth is solely of grasses.After two or three years of producing vegetable and grain crops on cleared land, migrants abandon it for another plot.Trees, bushes, and forests are often cut down by slash-and-burn methods.Potash is added to the soil by the ashes.After the rains, the seeds are sown.
A majority of the fields are in various stages of natural re-growth, which is why shifting cultivation is a form of agriculture.For a short time, fields are cultivated, and then allowed to recover, or be fallowed, for a long time.Once a cultivated field is cleared of natural vegetation, it will be replanted in crops.Cultivated and fallowed fields are found in established and stable shifting cultivation systems.In India, this type of farming is called jhumming.[3]
Fallow fields are productive.During the fallow period, shifting cultivators use the successive vegetation species widely for timber for fencing and construction, firewood, thatching, ropes, clothing, tools, carrying devices and medicines.It is common for fruit and nut trees to be planted in fields that are not actually orchards.There are shrubs and trees that can be planted or protected from burning in fallows.Many species have been shown to fix nitrogen.Plants that attract birds and animals are important for hunting.The benefits of tree fallows include protecting the soil against physical erosion and drawing vital minerals to the surface.
The time between when the land is cultivated and when it is not is critical to the stability of shifting systems.Whether or not the shifting cultivation system suffers a net loss of nutrients over time is determined by these parameters.Unless actions are taken to arrest the losses, the system will eventually lead to a degradation of resources.In some cases soil can be exhausted in less than a decade.
The loss of soil organic matter, cation-exchange-capacity and in nitrogen and phosphorus, as well as the increase in acidity, are all related to the length of a field.In a stable shifting cultivation system, the fallow is long enough for the natural vegetation to recover to the state they were in before it was cleared, and the soil to return to its pre-cropping condition.During fallow periods, soil temperatures are lower, wind and water erosion is reduced, the soil fauna is decreased, and soil structure is altered.
Even though primary forests are less bio-diverse, the secondary forests created by shifting cultivation are often richer in plant and animal resources useful to humans.The forest is viewed as an agricultural landscape of fields at various stages.People can't see the trees in the fields.They see a landscape in which trees are cut and burned randomly as a stage to be progressed beyond.Shifting agriculture is not one of these things.Stable shifting cultivation systems are closely adapted to micro-environments and are carefully managed by farmers.Shifting cultivators have a high level of knowledge and understanding of their local environments and of the crops and native plant species they exploit.Land tenure systems can be complex and highly adaptive.Cash has been skillfully integrated into some shifting cultivation systems.The high initial cost is one of its disadvantages.
At the end of the 19th century, shifting cultivation was still being practiced as a viable and stable form of agriculture in many parts of Europe and east into Siberia.In the late 1860s a forest-field rotation system called Reutbergwirtschaft was used to produce bark for tanneries and wood for charcoal and flour.Swidden farming was practiced in Siberia until the 1930s, using specially selected varieties.In Eastern Europe and Northern Russia, the main crops were wheat, oats, radishes, and millet.Cropping periods were usually one year, but were extended to two or three years on very favorable soils.Theallow periods were between 20 and 40 years.In 1949, the clearing and burning of a 60,000 square metres (15 acres) area was observed by the author.The logs from the cleared trees were sold for cash.A fallow of Alnus was encouraged to improve soil conditions.After the burn, turnip was sown for sale.There was a loss of agricultural labour in this part of the country.In Sweden in the 20th century, as well as in Poland, the Caucasus, Serbia, Bosnia, Hungary, Switzerland, Austria and Germany of the 1930s to the 1950s, there were eye-witness descriptions of shifting cultivation.
The agricultural practices that lasted from the Neolithic into the middle of the 20th century suggest that they were adaptive and did not damage the environments in which they are practiced.
The earliest written accounts of destruction in Southern Europe begin around 1000 BC.Forests were used for ship building, urban development, the manufacture of pitch and charcoal, as well as being cleared for agriculture.As a result of warfare, the demand for ships which were manufactured completely from forest products increased.The practice of granting ownership rights to those who clear felled forests and bring the land into permanent cultivation is a more important cause of forest destruction than goat herding is.The recovery of tree cover in many parts of the Roman empire from 400 BC to around 500 AD was evidence that circumstances other than agriculture were to blame for forest destruction.Lactantius wrote that "cultivated land became forest" in many places.The Mediterranean environment with its hot dry summers and wild fires became more common due to human interference in the forests.
Stone tools and fire are used in agriculture in Central and Northern Europe.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 were more important in destroying the forests.
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 tenurial practices.From the 16th to the 18th centuries, the demands of iron smelters for charcoal, increasing industrial developments and the discovery and expansion of colonial empires as well as warfare that increased the demand for shipping to levels never previously reached, all combined to deforest Europe.With the loss of the forest, shifting cultivation became restricted to the peripheral places of Europe, where permanent agriculture was not economically viable.Since 1945, agriculture has become more capital intensive, rural areas have become depopulated and the remnant European forests have been revalued.
Homer wrote about "wooded Samothrace", Zakynthos, Sicily, and other woodlands.The authors said that the Mediterranean area once had more forest, but much had already been lost and the rest was in the mountains.[5]
By the late Iron Age and early Viking Ages, forests were drastically reduced and settlements were frequently moved.The reasons for this pattern of mobility are not known.There are plows in graves from this period.There are traces of cattle enclosures on the hillsides where early agricultural people preferred good forests.
The common era did not use shifting cultivation in Italy.It is described as a strange method by Tacitus.The Germans had fields that were proportional to the participants but their crops were shared according to status.Distribution was simple because of wide availability, they changed fields annually with little to spare because they were producing grain rather than other crops.The "About Changing of Soil" was written in the late 19th century.5 ff.Tacitus talks about "arva per annos Mutant".This is the practice of shifting cultivation.[8]
After exhausting old parcels, the people of Central Europe moved to new forests.The practice ended in the Mediterranean, where the forests were not as strong as those in Central Europe.Burning to create pasture caused deforestation.Reduced timber delivery led to higher prices and more stone construction in the Roman Empire.123).In the Nordic countries, forests have survived despite decreasing in northern Europe.
The benefits of allying with Rome were seen by many Italic peoples.When the Romans built the Via Amerina in 241 BCE, the Falisci settled in cities on the plains and aided them in road construction, while the Roman Senate gradually acquired representatives from the Etruscans and the Italic tribes.10
The Migration Period in Europe was characterized by people who practiced shifting cultivation.As areas were deforested, the exploitation of forests demanded displacement.The Suebi have no private and secluded fields according to Julius Caesar.They can't stay in a place for more than one year.Between the Rhine and the Elbe was where the Suebi lived.Caesar wrote about the Germani, "No one has a particular field or area for himself, for the chiefs give year by year to the people and the clans, who have gathered together, as much land and in such places as seem good to them and then make them move."
The year was 63 BCE.The Suebi can easily change residence because they do not cultivate fields or collect property, but live in temporary huts.Like nomads, they pack their goods in wagons and go on to wherever they want.Carmen Saeculare was written in 17 BCE.The Getae live happily, growing free food and cereals for themselves on land they don't want to cultivate for more than a year.
Simple human societies brought about extensive changes to their environments before the establishment of any sort of state, feudal or capitalist, according to a growing body of palynological evidence.Shifting cultivation was the most common type of agriculture practiced in these societies.Insights can be gained from examining the relationships between social and economic change and agricultural change in these societies.
Questions about the relationship between the rise and fall of the Yucatn Peninsula's Maya civilization were raised as early as 1930.Archaeological evidence shows that the economy and society of the Maya began around 250 AD.It took 700 years for the population to reach its apogee.The great cities and ceremonial centres were left vacant and overgrown after the decline.The causes of the decline are uncertain, but warfare and the exhaustion of agricultural land are often cited.In suitable places, the Maya may have developed irrigation systems and more intensive agricultural practices.
Similar paths have been followed by Polynesian settlers in New Zealand and the Pacific Islands, who within 500 years of their arrival caused the elimination of numerous species of birds and animals.In the restricted environments of the Pacific islands, early extensive erosion and change of vegetation is thought to have been caused by shifting cultivation on slopes.The soil was deposited in the valley bottoms as a rich, swampy alluvium.The new environments were used to develop intensive, irrigated fields.A rapid growth in population and the development of elaborate and highly stratified chiefdoms led to the change from shifting cultivation to intensive irrigation fields.The course of events in New Zealand were different in the larger latitude.The hunting of large birds to extinction, followed by the development of intensive agriculture in favorable environments, and a reliance on the gathering of two, were some of the stimuli for population growth.The changes were accompanied by population growth, the competition for the occupation of the best environments, and complexity in social organization.
The record of changes in environments in Newguinea is longer than in most places.Around 5,000 to 9000 years ago, agricultural activities began.The introduction of a new crop, the sweet potato, is believed to have caused the most spectacular changes in both societies and environments.The sudden increase in sedimentation rates in small lakes is a sign of the recent intensification of agriculture.
The root question posed by these and 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 not shifting cultivation was responsible for the extensive changes to landscapes and environments.Simple societies of shifting cultivators in the tropical forest of Yucatn began to grow in numbers and to develop complex social hierarchies.
A growth in population is the greatest boost to the intensification of a shifting system.For each extra person to be fed from the system, a small amount of land must be cultivated.There is a total amount of land that is available.If the area occupied by the system is not expanded into previously unused land, then either the crop period must be extended or the fallow period shortened.
There are at least two problems with the population growth hypothesis.Population growth in pre-industrial shifting societies has been shown to be low over the long term.There are no known societies where people work only to eat.Agricultural produce is used in the conduct of relationships between people.
There are two attempts to understand the relationship between human societies and their environments, one an explanation of a particular situation and the other a general exploration of the problem.
Modjeska argued for the development of two "self amplifying feed back loops" of ecological and social cause in a study of the Duna in the Southern Highlands.Slow population growth and slow expansion of agriculture caused the changes.The "use-value" loop is the first feedback loop.There was a decline in wild food resources as more forest was cleared, which was replaced by an increase in domestic pig raising.There was an increase in pigs.Human fertility and survival rates were increased by the larger number of pigs.
An expanding and intensifying agricultural system, the conversion of forest to grassland, a population growing at an increasing rate and a society that is increasing in complexity are the outcomes of the two loops.
Ellen attempts to explain the relationships between simple agricultural societies and their environments.Ellen doesn't try to separate use-values from social production.He says that almost all of the materials required by humans to live are obtained through social relations of production and that these relations are modified in many ways.Carl Sauer believed that "resources are cultural appraisals" and that the values that humans attribute to items produced from the environment arise out of cultural arrangements.The Duna of the pig was translated into an item of compensation and redemption.The obtaining of materials from the environment and their alteration and circulation through social relations are two fundamental processes that underlie the ecology of human social systems.Social relations play a role in environmental pressures.
Transitions in social systems and ecological systems are not the same.Natural selection and human interference determine the rate of change.Humans can learn and communicate their knowledge to each other.If most social systems have the tendency to increase in complexity they will come into conflict with or into "contradiction" with their environments.The extent of environmental degradation will be determined by what happens around the point of "contradiction".The ability of the society to change, to invent or to innovate technologically and sociologically, in order to overcome the "contradiction" without incurring continuing environmental degradation or social disintegration is of particular importance.
Esther Boserup studied what happens at the points of conflict with specific reference to shifting cultivation.Boserup believes that low intensity farming has lower labor costs than more intensive farming systems.This assertion is controversial.She believes that a human group will always choose the technique with the lowest labor cost over the highest yield.At the point of conflict, yields will be unsatisfactory.Boserup argues that instead of population always overwhelming resources, 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.The adoption of new higher yielding crops, the exchanging of a digging stick for a hoe, or the development of irrigation systems are examples of such changes.The controversy over Boserup's proposal is related to whether intensive systems are more costly in labor terms and whether humans will bring about change in their agricultural systems before environmental degradation forces them to.
There was an estimated rate of 34,000 km2 per year in Southeast Asia in 1990.It was estimated that 13,100 km2 per year were being lost in Indonesia alone, 3,680 in Sumatra and 3,700 in Kalimantan due to the fires of 1982.During the 1997 to 1998 El Nio associated dry spell, huge fires ravaged Indonesian forests.