Swidden Agriculture, food security and environment in semiarid area of Timor – Indonesia

Abstract

Despite policies inplemented to minimise Swidden Agriculture (SA) practices, it remains in semi-arid areas of Timor Island. A study of SA was conducted in Manikin Watershed (MW) of West Timor during 2017 to 2019 in oder to understand the nature of SA using Agro-ecosystems approach and to analyse the strengths of SA for sustainable upland farming management. The research applied survey method in data collection. Qualitative data analysed using thematic analysis descriptively and mapping spacial analysis using open access of SAGAGIS. The results showed that Agro-ecosystem characteristics of SA at MW have characterised by Low Productivity, Low Stability, High Equitability, High Adaptability, and High Autonomous. High adaptability and some important components which are suits with resource poor farmers becomes the main reasons why upland farmers keep practicing SA. The strengths of SA lies on the farmers’ perception that SA as an adaptive and suitable system of semi-arid upland farmers’ circumstances: saving labour, only need simple equipments, easy to applied, no external inputs used, fertilize the soil/crops, and harvest guarantee for at least one food crop. The SA have strengths to be improved and developed as a productive and sustainable farming model that suitable for semi-arid upland communities.