Shifting cultivation is generally reckoned to be not such a good idea. Eldis, the information service, has details of a report that says it can be OK, at least in the eastern Himalayas and under the right circumstances. Unfortunately the report itself seems to be behind a paywall, so I’ve been unable to read it. But I wonder, can shifting cultivation really support growing populations?
Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog
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Fresh Nibbles: May 22, 2012
: <- click to comment- It’s so exciting: Rio+20 is almost upon us. Here’s the CGIAR’s Call to Action. Maybe they could fix the splits too?
- CIAT hopes to have some useful answers on food security and ecosystem services, in four years.
- At Chelsea, maybe the sun will shine on seedsmen of old?
- How they make flour from diverse agricultural products in Ethiopia video.
- They’re commercializing camels there too.
- Obituaries for bioinformatics tools. Stop sniggering in the back.
- Third annual Malthus lecture starts in just a few hours. In Washington DC.
Nibbles Archive: All that condensed goodness.
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Featured Comment: May 21, 2012
Tim Robinson updates us on livestock data at FAO:
…We had, of course, been working on the collection of the underlying livestock statistics, and the spatial modelling to produce the maps, for many years prior to them being published on the FAO website … but that is all quickly forgotten when they are re-distributed by a third party.
For your information, we have been beavering away since then, collecting more recent and detailed sub-national livestock statistics and disaggregating these using a slightly modified modelling approach, and 1 km multi-temporal, Fourier-processed MODIS imagery from the University of Oxford…
Global datasets coming soon, apparently. We’ll keep you posted.
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
The problem here is that many things are thrown into the category of ‘shifting cultivation’. Almost any agricultural activity involving burning fallow vegetation is so classified. But such systems vary tremendously in degree of intensification, diversity and productivity. A key element is the labor invested in directing successional processes during the swidden cycle.
I have promised Agricultural Biodiversity a blog entry on the Maya swidden–I haven’t forgotten!
Excellent. We look forward to it!