Fire: A Constructive Prescription Michael Sadighian Motives for practicing swidden agriculture can be subsistence or market-based. For the poor rural farmers that tend to practice slash-and-burn, land is often their only available resource, and crops are their only source of income. Unfortunately, this income is often insufficient to permanently raise their standard of living, tying these farmers inextricably to their land (Hauser and Norgrove, 2004). Similarly, California In- dians subsumed swidden agriculture as a subsistence strategy, recognizing centuries ago that “fires can augment the growth and diversity of many economic plants, including roots, tubers, fruits, greens, nuts, and seeds” (Lightfoot, 2009). So it is evident that slash-and-burn agriculture can yield crops that carry economic and nutritional value, but how does it affect floral and faunal popu- lations? Early studies in Southeast Asia insist that swidden agriculture decreases biodiversity, basing their claims on a “commonly held belief that swid- den agriculturalists are responsible for about half of Indonesia’s annual deforestation” (Wil de Jong, 1997). “The prescribed use of fire actually fosters a more diverse ecosystem” However, there are numerous variations to the slash- and-burn method -- practitioners can be skilled or wasteful -- and claims like Wil de Jong’s have a tenden- cy to conflate all of these agriculturalists into a single group of swidden agriculturalists. More recent stud- ies discuss these differences in farming techniques. For example, Hauser and Norgrove have probed the effective difference between a long and a short fallow period -- that is, the period where the land lies uncul- tivated: long fallow periods “reverse the degradative processes of cropping”, such as soil fertility decline, weed buildup, crop pests, and crop diseases (Hauser and Norgrove, 2001). Long fallow periods improve soil quality, aboveground biomass nutrition, and soil- macrofaunal activity while combatting weeds, pests, B erkeley S cientific J ournal • S ave or D estroy • S pring 2012 • V olume 16 • I ssue 2 • 1 B S J Fire is no stranger to our humble genus, Homo. This incendiary romance is 1.5 million years old and dates back to Homo erectus: the first species whose use of fire is confirmed by archaeological excavations (Stephen Pyne, 2003). More recently, Homo sapiens started using fire for agricultural purposes in the early Holocene (10,000-7,000 BP) during the Neolithic Revo- lution, or the first agricultural revolution. During this period, human behavior became increasingly seden- tary as hunters-and-gatherers realized the nutritional benefits of cultivating crops on landscapes that could be exploited at predictable time-intervals. When deal- ing with infertile soil, growers often resorted to swid- den agriculture: the process of burning a plot of land to stimulate plant growth. Swidden agriculture is still practiced today, concomitant with controversy due to its ostensibly destructive nature. The centuries-old agricultural method of con- trolled-burning has been stigmatized by wildfires and other natural phenomena that wreak havoc on forests, private properties, and even human lives (Lightfoot and Parrish, 2009). Beyond their association with these destructive forces, controlled agricultural fires are also guilty of reprehensible CO2 efflux, inciting resistance from environmentalists. So how is such a flagrant ag- ricultural method still in practice today? Slash-and- burn agriculture is a profoundly efficacious farming strategy, with the potential for both economic and bio- logical growth that can, by itself, cultivate a diverse and healthy ecosystem. It thus becomes necessary to further understand this practice and its significant social and ecological role within modern-day agricul- tural societies. To understand how Swidden agriculture can promote crop-growth, it is necessary to familiarize oneself with the process of slashing and burning. First, a plot of land is prepared by cutting down, or slashing, all of the vegetation. Next, the plot of land is set on fire. It is best to do this during the driest part of the year to ensure effective burning of the vegetation; this step rids the soil of pests, and releases the nutrients from all of the cut-down plants into the soil -- the ash is act- ing as fertilizer. Finally, the fertilized land is planted with crops of interest (e.g. seeds, rice) just before the rainy season begins, and the land plot blossoms once again.
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