Drivers of shifting cultivation in Nagaland: crop cycles, crop selection, and management

This review explores a sociocultural framework for integrating traditional knowledge with modern agricultural practices to foster sustainable development. Traditional agricultural practices, rooted in cultural values and local knowledge, hold significant potential for enhancing environmental sustainability and community resilience. However, these practices are often undervalued or overlooked in modern agricultural advancements, particularly within communities facing economic or environmental pressures to adopt high-efficiency techniques. By examining traditional and modern agricultural practices within a sociocultural framework, this review investigates how community identity, social norms, and values influence the acceptance and adaptation of sustainable agricultural methods. This framework emphasizes the importance of understanding how traditional agricultural knowledge, such as organic pest control, crop diversity, and soil management, can complement modern practices like precision agriculture and biotechnology to achieve sustainable outcomes. Additionally, it addresses the role of community engagement in bridging knowledge systems, advocating for participatory approaches that involve farmers, indigenous leaders, and stakeholders in collaborative decision-making. These includes case analyses from rural U.S. communities where traditional practices have been successfully integrated with modern technology, illustrating both the challenges and benefits of this approach. The findings highlight that integrating traditional and modern methods not only conserves biodiversity and enhances adaptability to climate change but also strengthens community identity and empowers local populations. This review concludes by recommending future research on the social acceptance of agricultural technology in traditional communities, the role of cultural beliefs in sustainable environmental practices, and the impact of indigenous knowledge on environmental stewardship. The proposed framework thus serves as a guide for policymakers and agricultural practitioners to promote sustainable agricultural practices that respect cultural heritage while advancing global food security.

Indigenous people in Northeast India are facing significant challenges due to policy measures aimed at outlawing the controversial practice of shifting cultivation (SC) in order to cope with the environmental degradation and forest conservation, though, it has so far been unsuccessful. Such measures tend to overlook the contribution of SC landscape to the social and cultural well-being of indigenous people. This article explores the place and place-based practice bonding, drawing on a survey from Churachandpur, Manipur, Northeast India. Through structured interviews of 90 households of 9 village clusters with SC practitioners and focused group discussions, we outline the way SC system is developing the sense of place and giving the individual and community identities, besides giving a specific place character associated with it. Principal component analysis of four dimensions of place attachment reveals that traditional institution bonding exerts the strongest influence (Cronbach alpha 0.97) on their decision to continue with SC. Scores for nature bonding, lack of alternate occupation and economic bonding were 0.94, 0.92 and 0.83, respectively. The study established that SC is strongly intertwined with the culture and social life of people who practice it. Social wellbeing of jhumias outweighs their economic reasons of attachment to SC and it would not be prudent to brand it merely as a form of agroforestry system.

Shifting cultivation is a traditional agricultural practice that has been carried out by Indigenous communities across tropical regions for thousands of years. Although this system is characterized by land rotation and slash-and-burn techniques, it has become a subject of debate in the context of sustainable food security and environmental threats. This study aimed to analyze the controversy surrounding shifting cultivation as a potential solution for sustainable food security, as well as its ecological and socio-economic impacts. The method employed in this research was a Systematic Literature Review (SLR). The findings indicated that shifting cultivation had dualistic impacts. On one hand, it could lead to deforestation and significant carbon emissions, particularly when fallow periods were less than ten years, resulting in the loss of up to 80% of forest carbon stocks. On the other hand, when practiced with long fallow cycles (15–30 years), shifting cultivation could support the regeneration of natural ecosystems and restore up to 50% of forest carbon reserves. Furthermore, shifting cultivation contributed to the food security of Indigenous peoples through crop diversification and the preservation of local ecological knowledge in biodiversity conservation. Shifting cultivation represented an adaptive strategy for Indigenous communities in managing natural resources. As a food production system, it held sustainability potential when aligned with natural cycles and grounded in traditional knowledge. Its environmental impact largely depended on the manner of implementation, damaging when mismanaged, but regenerative when properly applied. Therefore, context-specific and inclusive policies that recognize Indigenous land rights are essential to ensure the positive contribution of shifting cultivation to food security and environmental sustainability.

This article attempts to seek the understanding and perception of Chepang on the practices of khoriya cultivation. It tries to explain the relationship of Chepang people to their traditional khoriya land by assessing the socio-cultural and economic importance in their life. Chepang’s indigenousness is closely connected to khoriya cultivation and the land is their ethnic and indigenous identity. The practices of shifting cultivation have to be understood holistically within the domain of social and cultural analysis. However, their relationship to their khoriya land and the agricultural practice cannot be understood only in measurable indicators and specific manners. For Chepang, shifting cultivation is a good ecological adaptation to their surrounding environmental settings based on indigenous knowledge and skills developed in the particular geographical setting on basis of trial and error. To understand culture, history and everyday life of the Chepang, knowing all about their traditional agricultural practice i.e. shifting cultivation is very significant. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3126/dsaj.v5i0.6367 Dhaulagiri Journal of Sociology and Anthropology Vol. 5, 2011: 247-62

Shifting cultivation is an agricultural practice in which plots of land are cultivated temporarily, then abandoned, and vegetation is allowed to regenerate during fallow periods. Shifting cultivation is usually associated with cutting and burning forests and thus it is an important driver of forest disturbance in the tropics. However, studies of shifting cultivation are limited, and current area estimates of shifting cultivation are highly uncertain. Although Southeast Asia is a hotspot of shifting cultivation, there are no national maps of shifting cultivation in Southeast Asia at moderate or high resolution (less than or equal to 30 m). Monitoring shifting cultivation is challenging because it is highly dynamic, small-scale and results in complex post-disturbance landscapes. In this study, we monitored shifting cultivation using Landsat time series on Google Earth Engine for the entire country of Laos from 1991 to 2020. First, CCDC-SMA (Continuous Change Detection and Classification - Spectral Mixture Analysis) was used to detect forest disturbances. Then, these disturbances were attributed by combining time series analysis, object-based image analysis (OBIA), and post-disturbance land cover classification. Forest disturbances were assigned to Shifting cultivation, New plantation, Deforestation, Severe Drought, and Subtle Disturbance annually from 1991 to 2020 at a 30-m resolution. The major forest disturbances in 1991–2020 were mapped with an overall accuracy of 85%. Shifting cultivation is mapped with a producer's accuracy of 88% and a user's accuracy of 80%. The margin of error of the sampling-based area estimates of Shifting cultivation is 5.9%. Shifting cultivation is the main land use in Laos, accounting for 32.9% ± 1.9% of Laos over the past 30 years. To study changes in shifting cultivation over time, the area of shifting cultivation was estimated at 5-year intervals between 1991 and 2020 with all margins of error <17%. Results show that the area of slash-and-burn activities in Laos increased in 2015–2020. Our study provides an effective approach for monitoring shifting cultivation, which can be potentially applied into other regions. Our results not only provide valuable information for land management in Laos, but also can support analysis of spatial-temporal patterns of shifting cultivation and estimation of carbon emissions associated with shifting cultivation for REDD+ reporting.

Shifting cultivation is a traditional agricultural practice in most tropical regions of the world and has the potential to provide for human livelihoods while hosting substantial biodiversity. Little is known about the resilience of shifting cultivation to increasing agricultural demands on the landscape or to unexpected disturbances. To investigate these issues, we develop a simple social-ecological model and implement it with literature-derived ecological parameters for six shifting cultivation landscapes from three continents. Analyzing the model with the tools of dynamical systems analysis, we show that such landscapes exhibit two stable states, one characterized by high forest cover and agricultural productivity, and another with much lower values of these traits. For some combinations of agricultural pressure and ecological parameters both of these states can potentially exist, and the actual state of the forest depends critically on its historic state. In many cases, the landscapes’ ‘ecological resilience’, or amount of forest that could be destroyed without shifting out of the forested stability domain, declined substantially at lower levels of agricultural pressure than would lead to maximum productivity. A measure of ‘engineering resilience’, the recovery time from standardized disturbances, was independent of ecological resilience. These findings suggest that maximization of short-term agricultural output may have counterproductive impacts on the long-term productivity of shifting cultivation landscapes and the persistence of forested areas.

Shifting cultivation is a traditional agricultural practice that has sustained rural and indigenous communities for centuries. However, the increasing impact of climate change, including rising temperatures, erratic rainfall patterns, and extreme weather events, has significantly threatened its sustainability. This study employs a systematic literature review to analyze the vulnerabilities of shifting cultivation systems, their adaptation strategies, and existing policy interventions. The findings indicate that climate change has led to a decline in biodiversity, reduced soil fertility, and increased socio-economic challenges for shifting cultivators. Various adaptation measures, including crop diversification, agroforestry, and soil conservation techniques, have been implemented to mitigate these challenges. However, limited access to financial and technological resources, coupled with restrictive policies, continues to hinder adaptation efforts. This study highlights the critical need for integrated approaches that combine scientific knowledge and traditional agricultural practices to enhance the resilience of shifting cultivation systems. Further research and policy adjustments are essential to ensure sustainable land management practices that support both environmental conservation and food security.

Shifting cultivation is a kind of traditional practice which is characterized by a cultivation phase, involving slash and burn of primary or secondary forest, and crop cultivation for one year, followed by a fallow phase. In Myanmar, forest dependent communities, particularly Karen and Chin ethnic groups, have practiced shifting cultivation for a long time and it was observed that their cultivation methods are based on the traditional knowledge transferred from their ancestors. This paper discusses the traditional knowledge involved in the processes of how local communities have practiced shifting cultivation in S Village, Bago Mountains, Myanmar. In exploring local communities’ traditional knowledge on shifting cultivation, qualitative research tools, including participatory focus group discussions, key informant interviews and field observation were employed. It was found that traditional communities avoid the choice of water resource areas and very steep slope areas as shifting cultivation plots. Moreover, after harvesting their crops, they abandon shifting cultivation plots, as fallow land, for over 15 years, which local people said to recover the forest vegetation for cultivation again. In the traditional shifting cultivation system, it was noticed that villagers select shifting cultivation sites according to sites’ potential for high yield of paddy and other associated crops with low environmental impact/damage following their traditional knowledge and practices. However, further research about whether traditional shifting cultivation system causes forest degradation and deforestation is still necessary.

Shifting cultivation is a common agricultural practice that is the basis of subsistence for many rural populations throughout the Tropics. The recent strong trend towards shorter fallow periods has led to widespread concern about declines in soil fertility, crop yields, and food security. Unlike most research on this problem, we focus here on steeply sloped regions such as Mizoram state in northeast India where most land is at an incline of >33°, and the potential for relatively large soil erosional losses may necessitate distinctive solutions. Our goal is to review the relevant literature so as to optimize the direction and quality of future science research on shifting cultivation in Mizoram. Our analysis suggests that the most promising options for improving shifting cultivation are nutrient and water supplementation, optimising crop choice, extending the site use period, enhancing the fallow recovery rate, and controlling the burns and their environmental impacts. Promising alternatives for replacing shifting cultivation include inter-row cropping between contour hedgerows of nitrogen-fixing shrubs, slope terracing, agroforestry with anti-erosional plants, and bamboo forest harvesting. In addition, we identify the principal research questions that should be addressed before each of these options can be evaluated and recommended as part of land use planning initiatives. Overall, we conclude that intelligent and careful use of commercial fertilizer in combination with organic matter additions is likely to be an important feature of many of the solutions to the problem of shortening fallow periods in shifting cultivation on steep slopes.

Sustainable food production is one of the major challenges in this era of global environmental problems such as population pressure, natural resource degradation, biodiversity loss and climate change. Agriculture being one of the prime sectors that sustain livelihood of the farmers also contributes to climate change. In this context, traditional agriculture has proven its effectiveness, adaptability and resilience for sustainable food production in the changing climatic conditions. The bun agricultural practice of the Khasi and Jaintia tribes of Meghalaya in Northeast India based on traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) offers an interesting example of sustainable agriculture and food production. An overview of the traditional bun cultivation practices and its modifications adopted by the local people has been discussed in the present study. The data for this study were obtained through focus group discussions with the cultivators and interviewing key informants followed by field survey. The study revealed that farmers grow the crops under a completely rain fed condition and make use of limited biomass and land resources, organic fertilizers and pesticides, thereby making the system sustainable. In addition, the farmers also abandon the land for a period of one to three years to restore soil fertility. However, due to increase in population, growing food demand, limited land availability and the socio-economic condition of the farmers, the traditional bun cultivation has undergone a number of modifications. The modifications include changes in cropping pattern, choice of crop, pest management and fallow period management that adapt well to local climatic conditions with higher food production and economic benefits. Understanding the various modifications and their integration with traditional agricultural practices can potentially form the basis for a sustainable, economically viable, environmentally sound and resilient agricultural system.

Characterization of shifting cultivation, trends, and diversification of livelihood patterns: A case study from forest villages in Barak valley, Assam, Northeast India

Shifting cultivation, particularly the jhum system, has been a long-standing practice in Northeast India, sustaining the livelihoods of indigenous communities. This paper aims to reevaluate the enduring practice of shifting cultivation in Northeast India, acknowledging its deep historical roots, vital role in sustaining tribal livelihoods, and dynamic adaptation amidst socioeconomic change. Tracing its origins to the Neolithic era, shifting cultivation has evolved from a subsistence-based model to one generating modest surpluses, remaining integral to food security and cultural identity in rural tribal communities. Various research papers and government reports have been studied thoroughly from 1985 to 2023 to examine the evolving perceptions of shifting cultivation, considering both its economic and environmental implications. While often criticized for contributing to deforestation, soil degradation, and biodiversity loss, recent research suggests that the practice can be more sustainable than traditionally assumed, especially when fallow cycles are maintained. The jhum system promotes biodiversity conservation through its use of mixed cropping and the protection of endemic species. However, challenges such as insecure land tenure and inadequate policies have hindered the adoption of alternative farming practices. This study emphasizes the significance of blending traditional ecological wisdom with contemporary agricultural techniques to bolster food security, conserve biodiversity, and enhance community well-being. The findings demonstrate that, when bolstered by sustainable interventions such as homestead production systems that honor indigenous values, shifting cultivation continues to serve as a crucial livelihood for tribal communities in Northeastern India, fostering rural development, cultural preservation, and environmental sustainability.

Tree diversity, soil organic carbon lability and ecosystem carbon storage under a fallow age chronosequence in North East India

Shifting cultivation is a traditional farming system practiced in the tropical mountainous areas. Although it has been widely perceived as an economically inefficient and environmentally harmful agricultural production system, recent science reviews, however, indicate that the deleterious impacts of shifting cultivation on environment may have been overestimated. Despite the pressures of agricultural intensification in areas where shifting cultivation occurs, farmers across the tropics still maintain this traditional farming system. The objective of this study was to explore existing traditional shifting cultivation practices and their various modifications including the innovative farming techniques developed by farmers in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHTs), the mountainous region of Bangladesh, and examine their importance with respect to recent socio-economic and environmental changes. The study revealed that shifting cultivation still exists as the most dominant farming method which supports livelihoods and culture of the hill ethnic people. However, demand for more food and household income to meet livelihood needs of an increasing population combined with a rapid deterioration of soil and water quality over decades contributed to development of innovative farming practices through fallow land farming, crop substitution, agroforestry and homestead gardening in the CHTs. Through these farming techniques farmers maintain a strong relationship with traditional knowledge system embedded in the age-old shifting cultivation practices.Today state policies and market forces act in favor of replacement of traditional farming with intensive cash crop agriculture. It seems that disappearance of traditional farming practices from the hills may threaten local biodiversity and food security. It may be recommended that shifting cultivation should be encouraged in areas where they have potential for contributing to preservation of native biodiversity and ecosystem services, and protection of local peoples' food security and cultural identity.

Shifting cultivation is one of the types of agriculture practice in tropical region of the world mostly found in hilly region where plain land is absent and primitive methods are followed to grow the crops. Agriculture is purely depended on rain and is a labour intensive. Shifting cultivation or slash and burn agriculture is known as Jhum cultivation in North-East India. It is a labour intensive, extensive use of land, technology primitive; production and income are very low. The man who practices jhum cultivation i.e. shifting cultivator is called Jhmias. He selects the same field on the slope of the hill on rotation basis. Due to in fertility of soil the Jhumia is compelled to shift his cultivation on another plot. He keeps the land fallow for a number of years for regeneration of forests. Again, he uses the same land that is why this process is called shifting cultivation. The main characteristic of Shifting cultivation is rotation of fields in a circle wise which is known as jhum circle i.e. ‘The intervening period for which a jhum land is abandoned.