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•What is Shifting Cultivation

•How is it done

•When & where is it done

•The advantages & disadvantages

•Environment effects

•Bibliography

-It is an ancient farming method.

-Farming system where farmers move on from one place to another when the land becomes exhausted.

-An agricultural system in which plots of land are cultivated temporarily, then abandoned.

Clearing-

Cut down most of the trees at the start of the dry season.

Burning-

Burn the trees that dry out and the

burnt trees will become fertilizer

for the soil.

Planting-Holes are made into the ground and drops few seeds of rice & vegetables into the holes.

Harvesting-

Crops are harvested if there has been sufficient rain for the plants to grow and mature.

Moving on-

After a few years of planting crops, the fertility of the soil declines, so they have to move to a new area and cleared & planted again.

Shifting cultivation is widely used on :

•Grasslands

•Central Africa

•Northeastern South Africa

•Southeast China

•When the sites become less fertile

•When the sites is invaded by weeds

•When the area is hard to plant the crops

Advantages Disadvantages

• Easy to grow quickly • Not long term

• Environmentally friendly because it is organic farming

• Not good for land that is used only for one type of

crop

  • Not enough food

  • Not cost effective

 • Troublesome to move

around all the time

 • Difficult to prosper

because everybody has to work for food.

•devastating and far-reaching in degrading the environment

•large-scale deforestation

•soil and nutrient loss

•invasion by weeds and other species

•Deforestation

Books:•1957, The World Book Encyclopedia Volume1, p.149, World Book, Inc

*This book is an encyclopedia on farming. It has only a short paragraph of describing the shifting cultivation. However, the paragraph include many important point of shifting cultivation.

Websites:•Shifting Cultivation, Oct 20, 2007http://library.thinkquest.org/26634/forest/farming/shiftcult.htm*The website has some description of shifting cultivation. It’s easy to understand

•Advantages & Disadvantages , Oct22, 2007http://www.geocities.com/hamchinpeng/advantage.htm*There is a table that clearly shows the advantages and disadvantages. The table help us to understand easily and define them clearly.

• Rajiv Ranjan and V. P. Upadhyay 6 August 1999 .Ecological problems due to shifting cultivation 23 Oct 2007.http://www.ias.ac.in/currsci/nov25/articles12.htm*The website have different ideas to decrease the effects of shifting cultivation and also point out some harmful effects of shifting cultivation.

1. What are the 5 steps of shifting cultivation?

2. Which place is widely using shifting cultivation?

3. List 1 advantage & disadvantage