Abstract
Abstract Understanding landscape change starts with understanding what motivates farmers to transition away from one system, shifting cultivation, into another, like plantation crops, given that they often have limited labour and money available. In this study we explored the resource allocation strategies of the farmers of the Karbi tribe in Northeast India, who practise a traditional shifting cultivation system called jhum. Through Companion Modelling, a participatory modelling framework, we developed a model of the local farming system in the form of a role playing game. Within this environment local jhum farmers participated in a simulation that covered 18 years of farming, while also allowing us to analyse the impacts of their decisions together. In the game, farmers allocated labour and cash to meet household needs, while also investing in new opportunities like bamboo, rubber and tea, or the chance to improve their living standards. When given new opportunities, the farmers were eager to embrace those options where investment costs, especially monetary investments, are low. Returns on these investments were not automatically re-invested in further long-term, more expensive and promising opportunities. Instead, most of the money is spend on improving the household living standards, and especially on the education of the next generation. The landscape changed profoundly as a result of the farmer strategies. Natural ecological succession was replaced by an improved fallow of marketable bamboo species. Plantations of tea and rubber became more prevalent as time progressed. However, old practises that ensure food security are not yet given up.
Highlights
Shifting cultivation is still widespread throughout the tropics, constituting the main agricultural production system for the rural poor living predominantly in tropical forest margins
Landscapes shaped by shifting cultivation currently cover roughly 280 million hectares worldwide (Heinimann et al 2017), with an estimated 30 and 40 million people directly depending on shifting cultivation in Southeast Asia alone (Brady 1996, Mertz et al 2009a)
Though shifting cultivation often blamed as a main cause of both forest degradation and deforestation, it is the discontinuation of shifting cultivation, and its replacement by intensified land uses, that results in far larger negative environmental impacts (Heinimann et al 2017), including the loss of biodiversity and reduced carbon stocks (Bruun et al 2009; Rerkasem et al 2009)
Summary
Shifting cultivation is still widespread throughout the tropics, constituting the main agricultural production system for the rural poor living predominantly in tropical forest margins. The drivers affecting the practice of shifting cultivation are strongly linked to changes in local demographics, such as population growth and migration, and to economic development, road network development, market access, agricultural policies, and changes in public attitudes (van Vliet et al 2012, Hurni et al 2013, Cairns 2015, Cochard et al 2016). Both public policies and an increased access to economic structures (such as credit and cooperative) can push towards a reduction in the area used for shifting cultivation
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