Shifting Cultivation, Livelihood and Food Security: New and Old Challenges for Indigenous Peoples in Asia

TitleShifting Cultivation, Livelihood and Food Security: New and Old Challenges for Indigenous Peoples in Asia
Annotated RecordAnnotated
Year of Publication2014
AuthorsAsia_Indigenous_Peoples_Pact(AIPP), International_Work_Group_for_Indigenous_Affairs(IWGIA)
Pagination1-11
Place PublishedChiang Mai
Key themesConversion-FoodSecurity, Dispossession-grabbing, MarginalisedPeople, MigrationLabour
Abstract

This briefing note presents the findings of seven case studies conducted from May to June 2014. The studies were conducted in Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Laos, Nepal and Thailand and looked into the livelihood and food security among indigenous shifting cultivation communities in South and Southeast Asia. The briefing note provides a summary of the main findings of the case studies and the common recommendations from a multi-stakeholders consultation held August 28-29 in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Participants at the multi-stakeholder consultation included government agencies, UN agencies, regional NGOs, Indigenous Peoples’ organisations, community leaders, and local governments. Shifting cultivation and food security Across South and Southeast Asia a large number of people depend for their livelihood and food security fully or partly on shifting cultivation. The majority of the people practicing shifting cultivation in South and Southeast Asia belong to ethnic groups that are referred to as ethnic minorities, tribal people, hill tribes, aboriginal people or, as they increasingly call themselves, Indigenous Peoples. Shifting cultivation is probably one of the most misunderstood and thus controversial forms of land use. Over the past decades, arguments brought forward against this form of land use – that it is an economically inefficient and ecologically harmful practice – have been proven inaccurate or outright wrong. Yet, shifting cultivators are still widely discriminated and neglected and in most countries their land and resource rights are not recognized and protected. The studies take stock of the changes in livelihood and food security among indigenous shifting cultivation communities in South and Southeast Asia against the backdrop of the rapid socio-economic transformations currently engulfing the region.
URLhttp://www.iwgia.org/iwgia_files_publications_files/0694_AIPPShifting_cultivation_livelihoodfood_security.pdf
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Overall relevance: 

This summary report examines negative stigmas attached to shifting cultivation (also called swidden farming, rotational farming, or slash-and-burn agriculture) as a subsistence and livelihood strategy of mainly ethnic minority populations across South and Southeast Asia. This report contributes to the literature that critically examines the arguments against shifting cultivation. In particular, it explores how residual negative stigmas around shifting cultivation are being mobilised to subordinate ethnic minorities into a private ownership system. The report also highlights the ways in which the privatisation of land rights has disrupted communal and collective cultivation systems, and worked to undermine women’s positions.

Key Themes: 
  • Land zoning, planning, conversion and food security - As various land and forest allocation programs have engaged in land use planning and zoning, fallow areas have been restricted and given over to concessionaires, creating a significant process of impoverishment among mostly ethnic minority upland cultivators.
  • Land dispossession/land grabbing - Those practicing swidden agriculture are mainly ethnic minorities in upland areas. Swidden farmers have been dispossessed of their land through the mobilisation of two key discourses. The first is a neoliberal economic rationale, which champions economic growth through modernisation of agriculture and the “efficient” use of “unproductive” land. The second is drawn from arguments on environmental conservation that posit swidden cultivators as destroyers of forests. State promotion of large-scale industrial agriculture has been a powerful force behind the reallocation of land previously used for shifting cultivation to private companies for agribusiness. Because shifting cultivation is premised on a fallow cycle, seemingly “un(der)utilised” land has been ripe for grabbing, particularly as shifting cultivators are often unwilling to declare it as agricultural land for tax purposes.
  • Marginalized people's land rights and access: ethnic minorities, poor and women - Efforts to control shifting cultivation are intertwined with a modernist project of creating sedentary and legible citizens that contribute to the state’s treasury. It is also a racialized discourse that posits ethnic minorities and their agricultural practices as backward and in need of modernization. With increased population and land pressure, shifting cultivation presents an ongoing tension between the state and its disparate ethnic minorities. The undermining of shifting cultivation systems have also disrupted the gendered nature of relations to cultivation and connection to land, further marginalising women’s positions, forcing them out of local contexts and into farm labour jobs where they earn significantly less than their male counterparts. As privatisation of land increases, women frequently find themselves pushed into subordinate forms of work, and forced into isolated household structures where domestic violence is increasingly prevalent, and socially hidden.
  • Agrarian change and land: Migration and labour - The pressure to stop shifting cultivation has forced households to diversify their livelihoods, which frequently means relocating to urban centres or working as labourers on commercial farms. While stigmatising and, in some cases, criminalizing slash and burn farming has played a role, many young people in ethnic communities are migrating to urban centres to study and be part of the consumer economy and the life that urban centres offer. Migration towards urban centres has a complex tangle of drivers. When it does occur, it may not necessarily be permanent, as many of those living away from their rural communities still consider those communities to be home, and frequently remit money to their families.
Research basis: 

This summary report offers preliminary findings and recommendations of a project on Regional Support to Indigenous Peoples for Livelihood and Food Security, undertaken by the Asia Indigenous Peoples Pact (AIPP) and FAO. This project includes a brief summary of findings from seven case studies carried out in Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Indonesia, India, Bangladesh, and Nepal.