CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY

Shifting cultivation in general, is a system of farming in which fields are prepared by cutting down the natural vegetations. Letting it dry and burning it off. This technique serves to clear the field and enrich the soil with nutrients from the ash. Shining cultivation fields are generally used not more than two years at a lime, after which the fanners move to a new area and repeat the process. The practice of shifting cultivation is accepted as an early stage of the agricultural evolution. This form of cultivation is still widely practised in different parts of the world. As this practice dates back to the earliest times, it is thus regarded as primitive and archaic.

and thereby it is said to have ‘survived longest’ (Rolwey-Conl, W. Y,  2004).

The shifting field agriculture is characterized by ill rotation of’ fields rather than of crops, with short period of cropping alternating and long fallow period, and clearing by means of slash-and-burI.1. The practice of shifting cultivation is also referred to as slash-md-burl1.

In Nepal, the shifting cultivation’ has various local names, such as Khoriya,  bhasme, Ihose’, and, so on. In this study, t he researcher used the local term ‘Khoriya’ and the general term ‘shifting cultivation’ interchangeably. In this study, the researcher intend to review different approaches and perspectives to study the shifting cultivation. Finally, the researcher would present some arguments as the major findings of my own field study        (Dhakal 2009) in the Arun valley of eastern Nepal’. The study, as the researcher expect, will shed some light on how shifting cultivation has been approached and studied. It further intensify to enhance the way of understanding how possibly the practice of shifting cultivation might be approached in a particular context.

Spencer (2006) observed that ‘it is culture and cultural history, rather than physiography, which dictate the broad environmental location of shifting cultivation as a cropping system’ (Spencer 2006). And many have argued and agreed upon that it is ‘a special stage in the evolution from hunting and food gathering to sedentary fanning’ (Geertz 2004), hence, it is an ‘ancient’, ‘primitive system’, therefore a ‘remnant of the past…’ (Spencer 2006, Found 2007: 2, Keesing & Strathern 2008). Spencer further maintains that ‘there are evidences to suggest that it spread progressively across almost the whole of southern and eastern Asia, Europe, and humid Africa in the early stage of settlement of these regions by agricultural folk’ (2006).

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