Malcolm Cairns (ed): Voices from the Forest: Integrating Indigenous Knowledge into Sustainable Upland Farming

A central theme in academic literature about swidden agriculture is that rhetoric against this type of farming is rhetoric against the cultures that practice it. Swidden agriculturalists are not only blamed by many environmentalists and politicians for widespread ecological destruction and wasteful use of land; they are also portrayed as socially backward, unscientific, unaware of changing environmental conditions, and resistant to change. The academic backlash against these accusations and negative portrayals has often focused on how this rhetoric serves the purposes of governments, who want swidden agriculturalists to settle so that they can be more easily controlled, enticing them with infrastructure development in the form of schools, roads, medical clinics, electricity, etc., without mentioning what they will lose: power, autonomy, resources, and the freedom to continue refining farming techniques specifically adapted to their own land. Research about swidden agriculture has shown that the majority of traditional swidden systems have been sustainable for many generations. But systems that were once sustainable may not be now, as a result of several key factors: endogenous population growth and inmigration of outsiders, logging, large-scale conversion of land to monocrop plantations, commodification of forest products, and gazettement of indigenous lands as protected areas. These land pressures, which show no sign of decreasing in the uplands of the Asia-Pacific region, require increased productivity of existing farming systems. Indigenous farmers have displayed a vast array of innovations in farming techniques to increase productivity in response to these pressures, both for subsistence purposes and for income generation. The comprehensive volume Voices from the forest: Integrating indigenous knowledge into sustainable upland farming, which describes these indigenous responses, “shatters any illusions that shifting cultivators are static or incapable of change” (xiv). The book focuses on the dynamism inherent in swidden agroecological systems, and particularly on adaptations in an oft-neglected stage in the swidden cycle: the fallow period. Closer examination of indigenous fallow management (IMF) techniques reveals that many localized productivity-boosting innovations might be replicable in other places. In response to a need for cross-cultural exchange of ideas, this book is primarily intended to benefit indigenous farmers, by providing “a rich menu of farmer-tested innovations that we believe need to be shared with the wider community of shifting cultivators still searching for ways to cope with rising land use pressures and market economies” (xiv).This book collates 69 articles, demonstrating the range of systems classified as shifting cultivation. With contributions by over 100 scholars, many of them local to the 22 countries in the Asia-Pacific region where the studies were conducted, and covering a diverse range of academic disciplines (ecology, agronomy, anthropology, agricultural economics, etc.), it will also be a useful resource for development planners, rural resource managers, students, researchers, and practitioners. As stated by the editor, these articles represent the first generation of scholastic investigation into IMF and particularly indigenous responses to changing social, economic, and environmental conditions, and some are therefore “unavoidably preliminary and descriptive in nature” (xiv). A sequel volume, with more analysis, will be needed in a few years. Perhaps this next volume will address some of the shortcomings of the present volume as well as some of Hum Ecol (2009) 37:129–130 DOI 10.1007/s10745-008-9210-5