Talk:Slash-and-burn

message: Would slash-and-burn be a better title?  A-giau 03:50, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Some people wouldn't think to put in the hyphens, so it should probably accept both.  But grammatically it is indeed better (imo). Katzenjammer 18:07, 15 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Untitled 

message: I respectfully offer several arguments for leaving the Slash-Burn article: 
# If you link to the term “slash-burn”, it is useful to get an article that actually describes what the term “slash-burn” traditionally means & not an article that begins by advising you that shifting cultivation is “In some cases wrongly as bush fallowing or slash and burn”  without even explaining why slash-burn is an incorrect term. 
# There are two views of a Wikipedia. One is traditional-length articles on a limited number of topics, similar to a traditional encyclopedia. Another view is that the Wikipedia should contain a number of useful short articles which are directly relevant to the topic.  Those who favor the latter believe that in the Wikipedia, short articles frequently become absorbed by poorly structured, rambling larger articles. As a result they lose their usefulness as a link since the reader is now required to sort through unrelated material to gain the insight they seek. 
# And avoiding the use of slash-burn, I feel, may be a form of political correctness (i.e., real or perceived attempts to impose limits on language, terms, and viewpoints in public discussion in order to avoid potentially offensive terminology). Slash-burn may be viewed by some as primitive and possibly sounding pejorative.  It is, however, a term that has been used for years and is found in many publications. It has a more limited meaning than shifting cultivation. It is a historically useful term and should not be discarded so casually.  
I recognize my views are not shared by all, and will respect the actual majority position. But I would request that if the decision is to proceed, someone post an interim copy of slash-burn while it is being integrated so others can confirm those elements some of us value are carried into the integrated article. Williamborg 01:48, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: To my amusement, I see the slash-burn discussion link comes here while the discussion appears on the Shifting cultivation page. Williamborg 02:03, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  To merge Slash-Burn with Shifting cultivation, or not to merge Slash-Burn with Shifting cultivation; that is the question.  

message: Thanks. You've done what this article has needed for a while—clarified that it is actually a subcategory of Shifting cultivation. If one waits long enough at Wikipedia (and sometimes you have to wait since you don't have the expertise yourself) somebody steps up and does the job right! This is what I like about the Wikipedia; many hands make easy work.
Williamborg 13:20, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: thanks for the kind words. but there is a lot of work left to do on these two articles. cheers Covalent 17:50, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Great Improvement 

message: These terms actually are used synonymously.  For example
OECD Glossary of Statistical Terms
* Slash and burn:  Slash-and—burn agriculture is a method of cultivation whereby areas of the forest are burnt and cleared for planting. When soil fertility declines, cultivation shifts to a new plot. 
* Shifting agriculture:  Shifting agriculture is a system of cultivation in which a plot of land is cleared and cultivated for a short period of time, then abandoned and allowed to revert to producing its normal vegetation while the cultivator moves on to another plot. 
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From The Peregrine Fund 
Shifting cultivation--also known as swidden agriculture or slash-and-burn farming, and in México and Central America, as "milpa" agriculture--is the predominant style of farming in many portions of the globe's humid tropics, supporting millions of families worldwide
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Towards a Practical Classification of Slash-and-Burn Agricultural Systems - Sam Fujisaka and German Escobar (UK Overseas Development Institute 1997)
Since 1992 the International Centre for Research on Agroforestry (ICRAF) has
coordinated a global project seeking to develop technical and policy ‘Alternatives to Slash-and-Burn’ (ASB), where slash-and-burn is taken to include shifting cultivation and swidden agriculture.
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Holscher D.; Ludwig B.; Moller R.F.; Folster H. 1997. Dynamic of soil chemical parameters in shifting agriculture in the Eastern Amazon.  Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment, Volume 66, Number 2, 1 December 1997, pp. 153-163 
From the abstract: In Northeast Para, Brazil, shifting agriculture by land settlers has been practiced for around 100 years. After a common cropping period of 2 years the fields are left fallow for 4 to 8 years. Changes in extractable cations and C, N, and P of soils were studied on six fields which were under different phases of the rotational cycle. The chemical composition of soil solutions was also monitored for a period of 19 months. In topsoils, the differences in C and N contents and extractable Ca and Al could be related to the landuse history expressed as time elapsed since last burn. Repeated sampling on two ' slash and burn ' plots, showed significant increases in pH, CEC, extractable K, Ca and Mg, but decreases in extractable Na and Al, C and N content in the plots from 7-year old fallow to the first-year cropping field.
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Bowman DMJS, Woinarski JCZ, Sands DPA, Wells A, McShane, VJ. 1990. Slash-and-burn agriculture in the wet coastal lowlands of Paua New Guinea: reponses of birds, butterflies and reptiles.  Journal of Biogrography 17:227-239
From the article (second paragraph): With the notbale exception of Australia, slash-and-burn or swidden agriculture is a major land-use impact upon tropical forest ecosystems.  In Papua New Guinea, swidden agriculutre has occurred for at least 5000 years... Powell (1976) provides a description of shifting cultivation in the lowlands of PNG.  
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Toky OP, Ramakrishnan PS. 1983. Secondary succession following slash and burn agriculutre in north-eastern India. I. Biomass, litterfall and productivity.  Journal of Ecology 71(735-745)
From the article (first paragraph): Over large areas of north-eastern India, slash and burn agriculture (known as 'Jhum') is practised and secondary succession on abandoned farms rehabilitate the land for renewed cropping.
(second paragraph): The agricultural system involves cutting the vegetation, burning the debris and cropping for a year or more before abandoning the site.  The farmer then moves to other sites.  The interval before returning o to the same site used to be about 20-30 years but has been reduced to 4-5 years owing to an increase in human population density (Ramakrishnan & Toky 1978, Ramakrishnan et al. 1981).  This recent shortening in the shifting agriculture cycle...
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So, again - would someone please provide a reference which actually says that the two terms are different?  Because everything I can find says that they are the same.  Guettarda 14:51, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sources II 

message: Deleted the material: 
"THIS WAS VASTLY OVERSHADOWED by the 26,000 square kilometers of forest that was lost throughout the Amazon in one year, mainly for cattle ranching.  In fact, for every 1/4 lb hamburger consumed in the US from rainforest beef, about 55 square feet of rainforest was cleared. Although many fast food chains claim not to use rainforest beef, this claim is simply not valid. The USDA doesn't have an adequate system of labeling where beef is from. Thus beef grown in the rainforest can pass through a processing plant in the US and still be labeled as domestic meat." 
This material, with appropriate references, could legitimately be added to deforistation. 
If you transfer it, please provide an appropraite reference in the deforestation article as some of the assertions are likely to be subject to debate (and Wikipedia has plenty of debate, but minimizing it with references saves time and emotional distress). 
Thanks for this contribution to Wiki - Williamborg 01:38, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Deforestation versus slash and burn.  

message: Forgive me, I did use too many absolutes, and have reworded my post. I didn't even realize this topic had any attention, it hasn't been addressed in some time and the article on Shifting Agriculture (especially) is in need of organization, which led me here.
In regards to the question of organization, the above outline is the same structure as the agricultural articles on Crop Rotation, Irrigation, and Farming (Method, History, Problems, the third included in the last two articles). The first section can be approximately as long as the current "Defined" section, and History the same length, with the third about twice that length (about the same length as the second two sections in the current article). Overall article length would be current + History, as there's not much discussion of the history in the article right now, which would include an overview/maps of where it is used today. The third section can detail specific regions today while discussing overpopulation, knowledge dispersion, and intent of use, leading to the effects of soil depletion, loss of diversity, and loss of arable land.
Human agriculture depletes the soil of nutrients to convert those nutrients into a form which we can use. The key to sustainability is if there a net gain or loss of nutrients when taking in to account a specific: method, location, use of method. All of these factor into it, location, method, or use alone are not the sole cause. Monocropping, excessive herding, excessive slash-and-burn, and other practices can all lead to severe, permanent soil depletion, which US farmers suffered the effects of in the 1930's. This is supported in the fields of soil science, biology, anthropology, and agriculture, and an understanding of the underlying systems is important to understanding how misuse can be so destructive. Here are some examples I was able to dig up in just a few minutes, I will have more time to do proper source-gathering in a few weeks.
"The objective of this study was to assess the near- and long-term impact of traditional slash-and-burn agriculture on soil fertility in the village of Kembera, West Kalimantan, Indonesia. Soil fertility is widely viewed as one of the key limits to sustainable production in slash-and-burn agroecosystems. A chronosequence of sites ranging from currently cultivated swiddens to a 28-yr fallow was surveyed. Organic C, cation exchange capacity (CEC), pH, nitrate, extractable basic cations, available and total P, and extractable Al were measured as indicators of soil fertility. Inferred short-term trends point to significantly improved soil fertility conditions after burning in currently cropped swiddens relative to fallows. During the fallow, soil organic C, CEC, nitrate, total P, and extractable basic cations all manifest positive associations with fallow length after 3 to 11 yr of fallow. No declines in soil parameters were detected between plots based on the frequency of past slash-and-burn activity. Therefore, there is no evidence that slash-and-burn agriculture in Kembera has degraded these soil resources. While the results of this study suggest that slash-and-burn agriculture in Kembera has been ecologically sustainable, recent changes in socioeconomic factors influencing farmer's land-use decisions cast doubt upon the future sustainability of this agroecosystem." -- http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=3081899
"It is true that rain forests are being burnt for farming and grazing land. This practice has been common for thousands of years and is not necessarily harmful, although a major concern today. Small groups of people can survive indefinitely by clearing and burning a small area, planting a garden, and then moving on after a few years when the soil fertility declines to the point where plants do not grow well. These small plots cultivated by "swidden" horticulturists recover to original wild vegetation within a few years, and are not a threat to the long-term viability of the rain forest ecosystem. However, the last few decades have seen a different kind of "slash-and-burn" agriculture taking place: commercial cattle herders will clear huge tracts of forest in order to allow grasses and shrubs to grow for animal fodder. The cattle are grazed for a few years and then taken to market and sold for a profit. The practice is very profitable because forest land is cheap, and sometimes governments of tropical countries just give it away. However, tropical soils are very poor and cannot sustain growth for more than a few years without the rain forest cover to recycle nutrients rapidly. When a large area is cleared, the wild forest around the edges cannot reclaim the whole area very quickly so large clearings take longer to recover than small plots. If all the wild forest is cleared, the land may never again be productive." -- Don Libby, PhD.
"The ensuing agrarian reforms provided a firmer footing for some of the rural poor, but they marginalized indigenous lifeways. By pressing peasants to grow more of certain crops to sell at market, they eroded indigenous knowledge of crop varieties and techniques. Amazonian groups were affected by land reforms in a special way. The reforms failed to recognize the indigenous, swidden-based use of the forest, which involved cutting and burning patches of forest to create temporary fields, and later letting the forest regenerate. Governments thought swidden lands were unused. By opening them to ranchers, planters, and loggers, all of whom permanently clear-cut the land, reformers unintentionally wrecked ecologically sound practices." -- "Native Americans of Middle and South America,"
Thalassicus01 07:36, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cleanup 

message: I merged a redundant article into this one, adding two paragraphs. They still need some cleanup of their own, including sources. The second paragraph may repeat some information, as well. - Bootstoots 04:30, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merge from [[Slash and burn farming]] 

message: I searched for Swidden and ended up here, where there is a link to swidden, which redirects here again. The page Shifting cultivation has some info on swidden tucked away in it. I'm still not quite clear on what swidden means, but perhaps Swidden should redirect to Shifting cultivation instead of Slash and burn, since that is where there is some actual info about swidden? Pfly 03:54, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Makes sense. -- Paleorthid 15:43, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, after thinking about it, and reading more, I decided to just add a brief definition of swidden here, as it is more directly related to slash and burn than shifting cultivation, as I understand it. Plus the shifting cultivation page is rather rambling. Pfly 03:39, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Swidden

message: I added a "citation needed" tag to this claim:
... most of the Madagascar central highlands plateau is permanently rendered infertile and unproductive, due to large scale erosion that resulted from the adverse surface runoff deriving from the practice of slash-and-burn.
Because, for one, "permanent" means "forever", which is an awfully long time. Two, as I understand it, slash and burn was just one factor among many that contributed. A countertheory to the usual one blaming slash and burn is that under French control, attempts were made to control and restrict traditional burning, which along with the creation of forest reserves and parks where fire was strictly forbidden, encouraged large catastrophic wildfires and much more soil erosion than had been the case before French control.  In addition, there is a widely held theory that sees Madagascar as an island once completely covered in a dense forest, which the Malagasy ruined through massive deforestation and fire. This theory, as I understand it, is based mainly on a romantic speculation rather than good science. 
For these reasons I've added the "citation needed" tag.  My sources give quite a different picture of the environmental history of Madagascar. I am not trying to defend slash and burn (I am overly fond of forests!), but I think the prevailing views of the Western world are too sweepingly negative, condemning any practice of woods-burning by default. Smoky the Bear, spokesbear for the timber industry, tells us so! Pfly 07:36, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Wow, this has been here close to a year. I'd forgotten. Since a reference does not seem to be coming, I'll remove the claim. Pfly (talk) 23:55, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: References needed

message: This section is biased. Any of the problems mentioned would be far worse with static farming, and the example given of returning to the same site is not a classic slash-and-burn technique.
It would be simpler to say clearing forest leads to deforestation.  But that is a truism.
In fact, if done on an appropriate level, i.e. at which the forest is allowed to regenerate, slash-and-burn is ecologically neutral.--Jack Upland (talk) 08:04, 22 September 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: The Ecological Implications section was blanked. I reviewed and believe I understand why this appropriate. -- Paleorthid (talk) 22:09, 28 October 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ecological implications 

message: Someone seems to have a axe to grind about Madagascar.  Consider this passage:
:In some cases such as parts of Madagascar, as well as many other places, slash-and-burn may have no cyclical aspects (e.g., slash-and-burn activities can render soils incapable of further yields for decades), or may be practiced on its own as a single cycle farming activity with no follow on cropping cycle. Shifting cultivation normally implies the existence of a cropping cycle component, whereas slash-and-burn actions may or may not be followed by cropping. 
If it is not followed by cropping it is not slash-and-burn agriculture.  If it is not shifting, then it hardly fits the bill either.  
I'm deleting this.--Jack Upland (talk) 08:14, 22 September 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: If it is not shifting cultivation, then all "slash-and-burn" amounts to is a method of clearing forest.  Even so, it is more ecologically sound than logging as the nutrients are returned to the soil.--Jack Upland (talk) 04:57, 26 September 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Madagascar! 

message: Prior content in this article duplicated one or more previously published sources. The material was copied from: http://global.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/548086/slash-and-burn-agriculture. Copied or closely paraphrased material has been rewritten or removed and must not be restored, unless it is duly released under a compatible license. (For more information, please see "using copyrighted works from others" if you are not the copyright holder of this material, or "donating copyrighted materials" if you are.) For legal reasons, we cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or published material; such additions will be deleted. Contributors may use copyrighted publications as a source of information, but not as a source of sentences or phrases. Accordingly, the material may be rewritten, but only if it does not infringe on the copyright of the original or plagiarize from that source. Please see our guideline on non-free text for how to properly implement limited quotations of copyrighted text. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously, and persistent violators will be blocked from editing. While we appreciate contributions, we must require all contributors to understand and comply with these policies. Thank you.  SM5POR (talk) 17:07, 23 June 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Copyright problem removed 

message: Prior content in this article duplicated one or more previously published sources. The material was copied from: http://www.eoearth.org/article/Slash_and_burn. Copied or closely paraphrased material has been rewritten or removed and must not be restored, unless it is duly released under a compatible license. (For more information, please see "using copyrighted works from others" if you are not the copyright holder of this material, or "donating copyrighted materials" if you are.) For legal reasons, we cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or published material; such additions will be deleted. Contributors may use copyrighted publications as a source of information, but not as a source of sentences or phrases. Accordingly, the material may be rewritten, but only if it does not infringe on the copyright of the original or plagiarize from that source. Please see our guideline on non-free text for how to properly implement limited quotations of copyrighted text. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously, and persistent violators will be blocked from editing. While we appreciate contributions, we must require all contributors to understand and comply with these policies. Thank you.  SM5POR (talk) 17:07, 23 June 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Copyright problem removed 

message: The usage of  is under discussion, see talk:Slash (musician) -- 70.24.244.158 (talk) 05:36, 5 September 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: "{{noredirect|Slash}}"

message: I am not sure that locating the origins of agriculture in the river valleys of Mesopotamia and Egypt is quite correct. As I understand it, domestication and agriculture had their origins in uplands. As technology and techniques developed, it moved down into the river valleys. Also, weren't there more centers of development of domestication agriculture than just Mesopotamia? Or am I thinking of urban civilizations when I would offer that agriculture developed in Mesopotamia, Southeast Asia, Africa and Meso-America?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Singing Coyote (talk • contribs) 22:33, 24 September 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Historical Origins 

message: There appears to be a large section commented out under the culture heading on the page, is anyone aware why this happened as I cant find anywhere (yet) that shows when it was commented out. There are some sections in there that might need review with regards to comments and opinions on homosexuality and it being natural or not that I dont feel experienced enough to decide upon myself. If someone could advise/assist it would be appreciated Amortias (T)(C) 17:18, 4 May 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Are you on the wrong page?--Jack Upland (talk) 10:20, 6 May 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Nope. If you look under the edit page of the article under the culture heading the whole section has been marked up as a comment and isnt showing on the article. Hoping someone watching this page might be aware why it was blanked out. Amortias (T)(C) 00:00, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: True. I think this is because (a) it's somewhat incoherent, (b) some of it (including the references to homosexuality) isn't strictly relevant.  I suspect the intention was for the relevant material to be incorporated into the article, but this hasn't happened.  By the way, I don't think the History/Historical References/Cultures structure is very logical.  It would be better to divide the information chronologically and geographically.--Jack Upland (talk) 19:29, 10 May 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: Culture

message: In case the edit summary wasn't enough (and it shouldn't be), that tag's because we (new readers) don't know who estimated the Brazil clearance thing, and which years they considered to come to "per year". That should be fixed before the tag's removed. The given source is offline, or I'd have fixed it myself.
Thank you, more knowledgable editor. InedibleHulk (talk) 03:54, 2 July 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Clarification needed in lead. 

message: Swidden agriculture is used for both subsistence and commercial purposes. Many commercial crops (e.g., taro, pineapples, rice) are grown using swidden systems in tropic highlands where a commercial economy parallels subsistence needs. Trevorking (talk) 02:04, 18 September 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Subsistence or commercial? 

message: I think the opening definition is inaccurate and possibly ethnocentric, to wit: 'Slash-and-burn is an agricultural technique that involves the cutting and burning of plants in forests or woodlands to create fields'. This definition is a good description of the practice of clearing vegetation for pastoral and other extensive land uses (more, land titles) in the Brazilian Amazon or in temperate-climate lands such as Europe and colonial New Zealand. In the great many more intensively-populated tropical regions such as in SE Asia, Central America, Africa or the Pacific Islands, however, swidden* clearing does NOT aim to create (permanent) fields, but rather to create a place to grow and cultivate crops, for a few short years, in at least partially-forested places. In the moist tropics, these clearings quickly revegetate after the initial harvest, often modified by the addition of useful agroarboricultural plants (e.g., yams, bananas, citrus) that continue to be harvested in the following seasons until they can no longer compete with the developing secondary vegetation (but yam vines compete well). It is well worth remembering that soil fertility is often of lesser importance here than absence of weeds, the major benefit of firing. The point is that the term 'field', which imbricates permanence, does not well describe the somewhat temporary, diverse polycultural and multilayered mosaic of crops and arboriculture typical of tropical swidden clearings whether created by slash then burn, burn then slash (observed in Fijian droughts), or slash then mulch.
*swidden (Old English dialect) = fire-cleared forest niche.
Trevorking (talk) 03:12, 18 September 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Definition 

message: This section doesn't mention Indians of any sort. What's up? Kortoso (talk) 21:06, 22 April 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Slash and burn Indians? 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Svedjebruk is the Swedish term for the traditional slash-and-burn practise in Scandinavia.
I cannot see any reason, though, why Svedjebruk should not be added as a separate paragraph into this article.
Even :sv:Svedjebruk links here while not a single Interwikilink connects to Svedjebruk currently.
best regards,
KaiKemmann (talk) 13:34, 6 November 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  merge from [[Svedjebruk]] 

message: Just popping in to say I've found a couple of sources that could be used to expand the Americas section in terms of the use of slash and burn agriculture in Native American culture. These are Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists and the Ecology of New England by William Cronon, the existing article on Native American use of fire in ecosystems, and Wildland burning by American Indians in Virginia by Hutch Brown, found in Volume 60, No. 3 pages 29-39 of Fire Management Today, a copy of which is freely available here. Slash-and-burn techniques were prominently utilised by some Native American tribes, and this article desperately needs expansion on that fact. --Ineffablebookkeeper (talk) 10:45, 30 August 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Use of slash-and-burn agricultural techniques by Native Americans 

message: Hi Wikipedians!
One thing I wanted to add to this article is that "slash and burn" is typically a derogative terms used to describe the technique detailed in this article. While the process can be extremely destructive when used on a large scale, it is sustainable on the small scale for independent farmers. This is well indicated in the "benefits and drawbacks" section, but that section has not references! Can someone please add some references and elaborate on this section. 
Thank you!Skezmoh (talk) 07:01, 26 April 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  "slash and burn" as a derogatory term + citation comment 

message: — Preceding unsigned comment added by Skezmoh (talk • contribs) 07:02, 26 April 2022 (UTC)
thread_title: Wiki Education assignment: Introduction to Policy Analysis

message: This Page Article is Redirected to word Jhoom which is not meaningful and Inappropriate.Please Anyone remove this Redirect from the word Jhoom. I'm NaUmAn MaLiK (talk) 21:22, 8 November 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Redirect