Shifting Cultivation

General Characteristics of Shifting Cultivation

Shifting cultivation involves farmers cutting, clearing, and burning forest vegetation to plant a variety of short-term and long-term crops, typically on small landholdings with little or no use of chemicals, machinery, or other agro-industrial inputs. Shifting cultivators generally do not till the soil, relying instead on fire to clear their fields and on sticks and other hand tools for planting. Shifting cultivation is an extensive system of land use in which farmers grow staple crops in new fields for only a few years before converting them to agroforestry production or leaving them to forest regrowth. The same plot of land may not be cleared again for staple crops for years or even decades, although the length of time varies according to local environmental, demographic, sociocultural, and economic factors. In this regard, shifting cultivation systems rely on land rotation rather than on crop rotation and fertilizers to maintain soil [Page 2541]fertility. Shifting cultivation systems are remarkably diverse in form and practice, but all mimic to some degree the ecological processes associated with natural forest disturbance and succession.

The production cycle of most shifting cultivation systems starts at the onset of the dry season, the timing of which varies by latitude and region throughout the tropics. Farmers first identify suitable plots for new fields and then clear them with axes, machetes, and other hand tools, as well as chain saws, which are increasingly common in all but the most isolated areas. Forest clearance is one of the most labor-intensive phases of production, and farmers often take the help of relatives and neighbors, who are remunerated for their work through labor reciprocity or with payments of cash or food. The cut vegetation is left to rot where it falls and forms a thick layer of debris that protects the exposed soils during the dry season. In some areas, farmers plant beans (Phaseolus spp. and Vigna spp.) and other rapidly maturing crops in newly cleared fields amid the decomposing vegetation.

...