Swidden Fields Research Articles

Seasonal Labor Allocation and Diversification Strategy of Swidden Agricultural System

Since the 1950's, the studies dealing with swidden agriculture or its society have developed in various disciplines including geography, cultural anthropology, agronomy, forest ecology and soil science. Though the themes handled are varied, their approaches can roughly be classified as follows: (1) an ecological approach focused on environmental change or carrying capacity, (2) a socio-economic approach focused on analysis of subsistence economy and social structure, (3) an approach from the viewpoint of ethno-science, which aims to analyze folk knowledge systems or their cosmology, and (4) a comparative approach associated with a genealogical perspective.On the other hand, there has been literature which investigates tropical swidden agricultural systems in comparison with other agricultural systems (for example, intensive irrigation agriculture). Geertz (1963) explained the difference between Inner and Outer Indonesia from their contrastive subsistence economies based on environmental factors. Taking notice of the difference of labor productivity and land productivity, Dove (1985) has developed this idea: based on the quantitative data of Indonesian agriculture, he has proposed that the swidden agricultural system has an advantage over the intensive rice irrigation system in terms of labor productivity, although the former may be inferior to the latter in land productivity. This implies that, in low population density areas, it may be rational to choose the swidden agriculture instead of intensive agriculture which the central government has recommended. His argument is considered to be important because it may offer a solution to the problem of underdeveloping countries' rural development plans propelled by the central governments and international aid organs for sustainable use.Keeping such a viewpoint in mind, I intend to discuss the economic rationality of swidden agricultural people in Southwest Ethiopia where an ethnic group (the Majangir) maintains a relatively self-sufficient subsistence economy and might be put into a critical situation by political interaction with the central government in the near future. They are living in the dense forest of the southwestern escarpment of the Ethiopian Plateau, engaging in swidden agriculture and honey collecting activity. Crops are produced for self-consumption, while they sell honey in the local market for cash. Their traditional settlements are very small: a settlement consists of only several domestic groups. They move their houses according to abandonment of their swidden fields every few years. Since the Ethiopian socialist revolution in 1974, however, sedentarization has been encouraged by the central government. At almost the same time, Christianity was introduced to them by a Protestant missionary. Sedentarization and Christianity have had a great impact on the society.From December 1992 through March 1994, I stayed in a village called Kumi which contains about 470 people. In this village, sedentarization and introduction of Christianity influenced them from a relatively early time. During my stay I made participant observations of their everyday life including agricultural practices, and I especially paid attention to the quantitative aspect of labor input and its seasonal allocation.I observed technological features of their farming system which can be summarized as follows:(1) Diversity of field types: I classified field types into five: (a) main fields cleared in the dry season (b) main fields cleared in the rainy season (c) sweet potato fields (d) fruit garden (e) backyard garden. Among them, worthy of note is (b) type, kate fields. Majangir adopts a peculiar way of farming, in which they first sow maize and sorghum directly in the bush, and then clear the grasses and shrubs. They cover the ground with them instead of burning. This farming technique allow them to prepare main fields at the height of the rainy season.

Growth and yield of Bactris gasipaes and Pourouma cecropiaefolia in swidden fields of Amazon Indians, Colombia

As part of a programme to study fruit growing under shifting cultivation by Huitoto and Muinane Indians in the Amazon area, Colombia, a 3 month field study was devoted to pejibaye palms ( Bactris gasipaes) and Amazon tree grapes ( Pourouma cecropiaefolia). Growth and yield of palms and trees are compared in the first-cleared field (‘home garden’) which has a more permanent character than the swidden fields (‘chagras’) cleared in subsequent years. Measurements of palms and trees in 1–8-year-old chagras and home gardens were used to fit growth curves to the growth and yield data of the two species. Both species grew faster and yielded more in home gardens than in chagras. Amazon tree grapes in home gardens had a larger trunk girth, smaller tree height and a much greater number of living branches, shoots, leaves and bunches. The slender, poorly branched habit of the trees in chagras is attributed to fierce competition for light from the resurging forest. Pejibaye was much less affected by the environment, but still the numbers of leaves and bunches per palm were higher in the gardens. The height of the palms increased so fast that it is likely that for this species soil factors rather than light conditions were limiting. The methodology afforded valuable insights in growth and yield of the two species over the first 7 years in both crop environments, on the basis of a 3 month field study. However, palm girth measurements revealed that growing conditions in young and old home gardens had not been equal, invalidating a basic assumption of the methodology. Hence the fitted curves for both species in home gardens are not equivalent to growth curves of given set of trees over a number of years and no unbiased estimates of the differences between chagras and home gardens could be made. Extreme caution should be exercised in constructing ‘growth curves’ by combining data from trees of different age.

Brief Communications: Food and Factions: The Local Politics of Selako Agricultural Development

This paper is an examination of the interaction of Selako Dayak village factionalism with a government-sponsored agricultural development project.' It contains two prinicipal threads in that it is both a history of factionalism in one village, later two villages, and an effort to account for differential acceptance and success of the development project within the community. This study has significance both for government policymakers seeking to effect agricultural change through the use of cooperatives, and for social scientists striving for an improved understanding of the genesis and functions of factionalism in modernizing societies. The Selako Dayak are an ethnic group of approximately 10,000 persons who live in western Borneo along and on both sides of the international border between Indonesia and Malaysia. Many Selako are longhouse dwellers, but for at least the last century, and increasingly during the past two decades, some Selako families have resided in unattached single family houses or in small, twoand three-door longhouses. Villages comprise several widely scattered hamlets of longhouses and/or single houses and a few isolated houses. Villages usually include 20 to 60 or more families and have populations of from 100 to 400 persons (Schneider 1978). Like most of the other non-Muslim peoples of Borneo, Selako are cultivators of swidden fields of dry rice and other crops. Selako have also traditionally farmed lowland fields of swamp rice, and in recent years have irrigated rice with government assistance. Rice and its cultivation are principal concerns of the Selako, constituting a primary theme in Selako religion and intruding into and shaping some of the most important Selako social forms. Throughout the century-long history of the Selako Dayak village examined in this paper, political schisms have structured the social and economic life of the villagers even to the point of determining residential patterns and work groups. The fact of a binary structure of factionalism is no doubt due to ecological and psychological factors. However, the actual lines of division traditionally have been based partially on kinship, which among Selako is reckoned bilaterally, and partially on the leadership abilities of individuals. One prevalent cause of factionalism in small-scale societies is the introduction from the state level of programs which bring into play new sorts of political resources that existing groups cannot handle (Bailey 1970; Bond 1976; Vincent 1978). With modernization, ambilineal kin groups among the Selako appear to be waning in importance, but the leaders of the new political factions which are replacing them are individuals who have been leaders in the kin groups, and bilateral kin ties are still of great importance. Factions, unlike descent groups, are neither permanent nor enduring, but the literature suggests that the leadership and membership of successive factions remains tied to historically determined groups (Bailey 1970; Robinson 1975). The flexibility afforded by the structure of factions explains their formation in times of rapid social change. Nicholas writes that factions:

Changes in Soil Fertility and Tilth under Shifting Cultivation

Soil nutrient dynamics during the cropping phase of shifting cultivation was studied. Following the initial enrichment of soil with major nutrient elements by the slash and burn practice, various loss processes set in, such as erosion, leaching and crop uptake. The most remarkable loss in nutrients was due to erosion that was caused by premonsoon showers even before seeding of the first crop of maize. Thus the initial enrichment was directly followed by a severe initial loss, and this loss appeared to some extent inevitable under the conditions of monsoon tropics with distinct wet and dry seasons. The nutrient loss process is, however, by no means simple and uniform. A factor that complicates the process is the release of nutrients from decomposing organic matter. In order to evaluate a steady-state rate of decomposition of soil organic matter under the natural forest, Kira's model was applied to the data of soil respiration and forest ecology. In com­ parison with the steady-state rate, the swidden field had twice as rapid a rate of decomposition in the first year and nearly 30% of the total stock of soil organic matter was decomposed during the two years of the cropping phase. The nutrient balance was computed for the cropping period, in compiling all the data collected. The results suggested that the decline of soil fertility would not be the cause of

Labor Efficiency and the Mechanism of Agricultural Evolution

Data from a situation of rapid agricultural change in Costa Rica illustrate the mechanism of agricultural evolution. Figures of the efficiency of labor using intensive and extensive agricultural methods support Boserup's law of least effort, but disagree with Bronson's approach. In a period of population growth, declining soil fertility lowers both yields and the productivity of labor in traditional swidden fields. A new system involving dry terracing and a quadrupling of labor investment is shown to be a more efficient use of labor for some segments of the community. This reversal of labor efficiencies leads farmers to choose the intensive methods and is the mechanism by which agricultural evolution takes place.