Future of shifting cultivation:

The percentage of land devoted to shifting cultivation is declining in the tropics, and its future role in world agriculture is not clear. Shifting cultivation is being replaced by logging, cattle ranching, and cultivation of cash crops.

All of the alternatives to shifting cultivation require cutting down vast expanses of forest. In recent years, tropical rainforests have disappeared at the rate of 10 to 20 million hectares (25 to 50 million acres) per year. The amount of Earth’s surface allocated to tropical rainforests has already been reduced to less than half of its original area, and unless drastic measures are taken, the area will be reduced by another 20 percent within a decade.

Governments in developing countries have supported the destruction of rainforests, because they view activities such as selling timber to builders or raising cattle for fast-food restaurants as more effective strategies for promoting economic development than shifting cultivation. Until recent years, the World Bank has provided loans to finance development proposals that require clearing forests. Furthermore, shifting cultivation is regarded as a relatively inefficient approach to growing food in a hungry world. The problem with shifting cultivation compared to other forms of agriculture is that it can support only a low level of population in an area without causing environmental damage.

To its critics, shifting cultivation is at best a preliminary step in the process of economic development for a society. Pioneers use shifting cultivation to clear forests in the tropics and to open land for development in places where permanent agriculture never existed. People unable to find agricultural land elsewhere can migrate to the tropical forests and initially practice shifting cultivation. It then should be replaced by other forms of agriculture that produce greater yields per land area.

Defenders of shifting cultivation consider it the most environmentally sound form of agriculture for the tropics. Practices associated with other forms of agriculture, such as introduction of fertilizers and permanent clearing of fields, may damage the soil and upset the ecological balance in the tropics. Destruction of the rainforests may also contribute to global warming.
Elimination of shifting cultivation could upset traditional culture as well. The activities involved in shifting cultivation may be interwined with other social, religious, political economy could disruptp other actities of daily life.

In recognition of the importance of tropical rainforests to the global environment, developing countries have been pressured into restricting further destruction of them. In one innovative strategy, Bolivia agreed to set aside 1.5 million hectares(3.7 million acres) in a reserve in exchange for cancellation of $650000000 of its debt to relatively developed countries. Deforestation of Brazil’s Amazon rainforest has declined from 2 million hectares(5.2 million acres) per year during the 1980s—including a peak of 2.9 million hectares(7.4 million acres) in 1985—to 1.1 million hectares (2.8 million acres) per year during the 1990s.