Slash-and-Burn Agriculture

Slash-and-Burn Agriculture PDF Author: Cheryl Palm
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 9780231508834
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 494

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Book Description
Caused in part by the slash-and-burn practices of both large- and small-scale farmers, the environmental implications of tropical deforestation remain a worldwide concern. Yet the small-scale farmers who use slash-and-burn agriculture depend on it to produce food and make a living for their families. With contributions from scientists, economists, ecologists, and anthropologists, this book provides an overall analysis of the environmental, economic, and social reasons for why slash and burn is so common and presents alternatives to this destructive practice.

Slash-and-Burn Agriculture

Slash-and-Burn Agriculture PDF Author: Cheryl Palm
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 9780231508834
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 494

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Book Description
Caused in part by the slash-and-burn practices of both large- and small-scale farmers, the environmental implications of tropical deforestation remain a worldwide concern. Yet the small-scale farmers who use slash-and-burn agriculture depend on it to produce food and make a living for their families. With contributions from scientists, economists, ecologists, and anthropologists, this book provides an overall analysis of the environmental, economic, and social reasons for why slash and burn is so common and presents alternatives to this destructive practice.

Properties and Management of Soils in the Tropics

Properties and Management of Soils in the Tropics PDF Author: Pedro A. Sanchez
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107176050
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 685

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Book Description
Long-awaited second edition of classic textbook, brought completely up to date, for courses on tropical soils, and reference for scientists and professionals.

Shifting Cultivation and Environmental Change

Shifting Cultivation and Environmental Change PDF Author: Malcolm F. Cairns
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317750187
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 1405

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Book Description
Shifting cultivation is one of the oldest forms of subsistence agriculture and is still practised by millions of poor people in the tropics. Typically it involves clearing land (often forest) for the growing of crops for a few years, and then moving on to new sites, leaving the earlier ground fallow to regain its soil fertility. This book brings together the best of science and farmer experimentation, vividly illustrating the enormous diversity of shifting cultivation systems as well as the power of human ingenuity. Some critics have tended to disparage shifting cultivation (sometimes called 'swidden cultivation' or 'slash-and-burn agriculture') as unsustainable due to its supposed role in deforestation and land degradation. However, the book shows that such indigenous practices, as they have evolved over time, can be highly adaptive to land and ecology. In contrast, 'scientific' agricultural solutions imposed from outside can be far more damaging to the environment and local communities. The book focuses on successful agricultural strategies of upland farmers, particularly in south and south-east Asia, and presents over 50 contributions by scholars from around the world and from various disciplines, including agricultural economics, ecology and anthropology. It is a sequel to the much praised "Voices from the Forest: Integrating Indigenous Knowledge into Sustainable Upland Farming" (RFF Press, 2007), but all chapters are completely new and there is a greater emphasis on the contemporary challenges of climate change and biodiversity conservation.

Slash and Burn

Slash and Burn PDF Author: Claudia Hernandez
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781911508823
Category : El Salvador
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
A woman fights to keep her daughters safe in the wake of war and political trauma in Central/ Latin America.

Amazonian Rain Forests

Amazonian Rain Forests PDF Author: Carl F. Jordan
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 146124658X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 143

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Book Description
DEVELOPMENT AND DISTURBANCE IN AMAZON FORESTS Contrasting Impressions 6 2 The rain forests of the Amazon Basin cover approximately 5.8 x 10 km (Salati and Vose 1984). Flying over even just part of this basin, one gazes hour after hour upon this seemingly infinite blanket of green. The impression of immen sity is similar when viewed from the Amazon River itself, or from its tributar ies. From a hammock on the shaded deck of a riverboat, the immensity of the forest presents an incredible monotony as one view of the shoreline blends unnoticeably into another. From both perspectives, the overwhelming reaction to the sea of trees that stretches from horizon to horizon is a sense of the vastness of the rain forest. In September 1985, I got a different impression of the rain forest. Several students and I journeyed in a self-propelled car along the single-track railroad that stretches almost 1000 km from the Carajas iron ore mine in the rain forest of Para State, Brazil, all the way to Sao Luis on the coast (Fig. 1.1).

Sustainable Practices For Plant Disease Management In Traditional Farming Systems

Sustainable Practices For Plant Disease Management In Traditional Farming Systems PDF Author: H. David Thurston
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 1000313735
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 269

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Book Description
Most scientists and many of the world's farmers have abandoned traditional farming practices and systems in an effort to increase production and to improve the efficiency of land and labor use. The resulting "modern" systems largely ignore many of the sustainable pest management practices that have evolved among farmers over centuries. In this book

The Politics of Swidden farming

The Politics of Swidden farming PDF Author: Debojyoti Das
Publisher: Anthem Press
ISBN: 1783087765
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
The Politics of Swidden Farming offers a new explanation for the changes taking place in swidden farming practised in the highlands of eastern India through an ethnographic case study. The book traces the story of agroecological change and state intervention to colonial times, and helps understand contemporary agrarian change by contextualizing farming not just in terms of the science and technology of agriculture or conservation and biodiversity but also in terms of technologies of rule. The Politics of Swidden Farming adds a new dimension to the underdeveloped literature on shifting cultivation in South Asia by focusing on the social ecology of farming and agrarian change in the hills. It provides a comparative viewpoint to state-centred and donor-driven development in the frontier region by bringing in different actors and institutions that become the actants and agents of social change.

Soils, Ecosystem Processes, and Agricultural Development

Soils, Ecosystem Processes, and Agricultural Development PDF Author: Shinya Funakawa
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 9784431568001
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The main objective of this book is to integrate environmental knowledge observed in local agriculture, based on the understanding of soils science and ecology, and to propose possible technical solutions and a more integrated approach to tropical agriculture. The chapters describe and analyze the ecological and technical countermeasures available for mitigating environmental degradation due to the increasing agricultural activities by humans, based on our scientific understanding of traditional agriculture in the tropics. This is an effective approach, as such ecological and technical tools previously involved in traditional activities are expected to be easily incorporated into present agricultural systems. The book starts with a rather classical pedological issue and analyzed traditional agricultural practices with different resource management strategies in terms of their modification of natural biological processes. It focuses on the present situation of tropical agriculture; that is, resource utilization in modern agriculture after application of technical innovation (increased application of chemical fertilizers as well as agricultural chemicals). Here, possible technical approaches to resource management that reasonably support agricultural production whilst mitigating environmental degradation are discussed. The negative impacts of agricultural development on our environment are rapidly growing, yet we are increasingly dependent on the agricultural sector for food and energy. The situation is similar in the tropics, where subsistence agriculture with low input management has long comprised most agricultural systems. Comparison of ecological and/or agronomical studies between different continents are still rare; therefore, this analysis may help clarify what is an essential problem when considering technical transportation beyond continents and/or between temperate and tropical regions.

Encyclopedia of Food and Agricultural Ethics

Encyclopedia of Food and Agricultural Ethics PDF Author: David M. Kaplan
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789400718531
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 1939

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Book Description
This Encyclopedia offers a definitive source on issues pertaining to the full range of topics in the important new area of food and agricultural ethics. It includes summaries of historical approaches, current scholarship, social movements, and new trends from the standpoint of the ethical notions that have shaped them. It combines detailed analyses of specific topics such as the role of antibiotics in animal production, the Green Revolution, and alternative methods of organic farming, with longer entries that summarize general areas of scholarship and explore ways that they are related. Renewed debate, discussion and inquiry into food and agricultural topics have become a hallmark of the turn toward more sustainable policies and lifestyles in the 21st century. Attention has turned to the goals and ethical rationale behind production, distribution and consumption of food, as well as to non-food uses of cultivated biomass and the products of animal husbandry. These wide-ranging debates encompass questions in human nutrition, animal rights and the environmental impacts of aquaculture and agricultural production. Each of these and related topics is both technically complex and involves an – often implicit – ethical dimension. Other topics include methods for integrating ethics into scientific and technical research programs or development projects, the role of intensive agriculture and biotechnology in addressing persistent world hunger and the role of crops, forests and engineered organisms in making a transition to renewable, carbon-neutral sources of energy. The Encyclopedia of Food and Agricultural Ethics proves an indispensible reference point for future research and writing on topics in agriculture and food ethics for decades to come.

Sustainable Agriculture and the Environment in the Humid Tropics

Sustainable Agriculture and the Environment in the Humid Tropics PDF Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309047498
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 721

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Book Description
Rainforests are rapidly being cleared in the humid tropics to keep pace with food demands, economic needs, and population growth. Without proper management, these forests and other natural resources will be seriously depleted within the next 50 years. Sustainable Agriculture and the Environment in the Humid Tropics provides critically needed direction for developing strategies that both mitigate land degradation, deforestation, and biological resource losses and help the economic status of tropical countries through promotion of sustainable agricultural practices. The book includes: A practical discussion of 12 major land use options for boosting food production and enhancing local economies while protecting the natural resource base. Recommendations for developing technologies needed for sustainable agriculture. A strategy for changing policies that discourage conserving and managing natural resources and biodiversity. Detailed reports on agriculture and deforestation in seven tropical countries.