Christine Padoch

The house gardens of Santa Rosa: diversity and variability in an Amazonian agricultural system.

Most research on house gardens suggests that this agricultural production type reaches its greatest development in areas of high population density. Gardens in low density areas such as the Amazon Basin have, to date, attracted little attention. A sample of house gardens in a ribereno village of the Peruvian Amazon is described and their great species diversity and variability in size and composition are discussed. The processes by which gardens in the village evolve and change are outlined. The study indicates that many young people of the village have a continuing interest in maintaining complex house gardens. More research on Amazonian house gardens is urged.RésuméEstudios científicos recientes indican que las huertas estan mas desarollados en áreas con densidades poblacionales altas. Huertas en áreas con pocos habitantes, como en la cuenca Amazóznica, hasta ahora han recibido muy poca atención cientófica. En este trabajo se describe un muestreo de huertas en un pueblo ribereño en la Amazonía Peruana, y se discuta la diversidad de especies presentes, y la gran variabilidad en área y composición. En este trabajo tambien se describe la evolutión de las huertas en el pueblo. Nuestro estudio indica que muchos moradores jóvenes del pueblo mantienen su interes en las huertas complejas. Mayor investigación científica sobre las huertas Amazonicas es necesaria.

Urban Forest and Rural Cities: Multi-sited Households, Consumption Patterns, and Forest Resources in Amazonia

In much of the Amazon Basin, approximately 70% of the population lives in urban areas and urbanward migration continues. Based on data collected over more than a decade in two long-settled regions of Amazonia, we find that rural-urban migration in the region is an extended and complex process. Like recent rural-urban migrants worldwide, Amazonian migrants, although they may be counted as urban residents, are often not absent from rural areas but remain members of multi-sited households and continue to participate in rural-urban networks and in rural land-use decisions. Our research indicates that, despite their general poverty, these migrants have affected urban markets for both food and construction materials. We present two cases: that of acai palm fruit in the estuary of the Amazon and of cheap construction timbers in the Peruvian Amazon. We find that many new Amazonian rural-urban migrants have maintained some important rural patterns of both consumption and knowledge. Through their consumer behavior, they are affecting the areal extent of forests; in the two floodplain regions discussed, tree cover is increasing. We also find changes in forest composition, reflecting the persistence of rural consumption patterns in cities resulting in increased demand for and production of acai and cheap timber species.

The Demise of Swidden in Southeast Asia? Local Realities and Regional Ambiguities

Abstract Swidden farmers throughout Southeast Asia are rapidly abandoning traditional land use practices. While these changes have been quantified in numerous local areas, no reliable region-wide data have been produced. In this article we discuss three linked issues that account for at least some of this knowledge gap. First, swidden is a diverse, complex, and dynamic land use that data gatherers find difficult to see, define and measure, and therefore often relegate to a “residual category” of land use. Second, swidden is a smallholder category, and government authorities find it difficult to quantify what is happening in many dynamic and varied smallholdings. Third, national policies in all countries of Southeast Asia have tried to outlaw swidden farming and to encourage swiddeners to adopt permanent agriculture land use practices. Drawing on specific, local examples from throughout the region to illustrate these points, we argue that an accurate assessment of the scale and pace of changes in swidden farming on a regional level is critically important for identifying the processes that account for these shifts, as well as evaluating their consequences, locally and regionally.

Carbon outcomes of major land‐cover transitions in SE Asia: great uncertainties and REDD+ policy implications

Policy makers across the tropics propose that carbon finance could provide incentives for forest frontier communities to transition away from swidden agriculture (slash-and-burn or shifting cultivation) to other systems that potentially reduce emissions and/or increase carbon sequestration. However, there is little certainty regarding the carbon outcomes of many key land-use transitions at the center of current policy debates. Our meta-analysis of over 250 studies reporting above- and below-ground carbon estimates for different land-use types indicates great uncertainty in the net total ecosystem carbon changes that can be expected from many transitions, including the replacement of various types of swidden agriculture with oil palm, rubber, or some other types of agroforestry systems. These transitions are underway throughout Southeast Asia, and are at the heart of REDD+ debates. Exceptions of unambiguous carbon outcomes are the abandonment of any type of agriculture to allow forest regeneration (a certain positive carbon outcome) and expansion of agriculture into mature forest (a certain negative carbon outcome). With respect to swiddening, our meta-analysis supports a reassessment of policies that encourage land-cover conversion away from these [especially long-fallow] systems to other more cash-crop-oriented systems producing ambiguous carbon stock changes - including oil palm and rubber. In some instances, lengthening fallow periods of an existing swidden system may produce substantial carbon benefits, as would conversion from intensely cultivated lands to high-biomass plantations and some other types of agroforestry. More field studies are needed to provide better data of above- and below-ground carbon stocks before informed recommendations or policy decisions can be made regarding which land-use regimes optimize or increase carbon sequestration. As some transitions may negatively impact other ecosystem services, food security, and local livelihoods, the entire carbon and noncarbon benefit stream should also be taken into account before prescribing transitions with ambiguous carbon benefits.

Post-Boom Logging in Amazonia

Recent analyses of timber exploitation in Amazonia conclude that a variety of socioeconomic and ecological factors in the region make a stable and profitable logging industry virtually impossible. Most of these studies focus on large-scale timber industries and their dependence on over-exploitation of a small number of high-value timbers. In this article we discuss the economic, ecological, and social aspects of Amazonian logging in a region where the timber industry appeared to have collapsed after stocks of high-value timber were exhausted. We show that forestry in a post-boom phase, currently found in many areas of Amazonia, differs from the better-described “boom” period in its scale of operations, in the range of timbers cut, in management practices employed, and in the costs and benefits of production. Results of a seven-year study show that when sawtimber, poles and firewood are produced in a management system that combines forestry and agriculture they can provide significant additional income for Amazonian smallholders.

High-yield oil palm expansion spares land at the expense of forests in the Peruvian Amazon.

High-yield agriculture potentially reduces pressure on forests by requiring less land to increase production. Using satellite and field data, we assessed the area deforested by industrial-scale high-yield oil palm expansion in the Peruvian Amazon from 2000 to 2010, finding that 72% of new plantations expanded into forested areas. In a focus area in the Ucayali region, we assessed deforestation for high- and smallholder low-yield oil palm plantations. Low-yield plantations accounted for most expansion overall (80%), but only 30% of their expansion involved forest conversion, contrasting with 75% for high-yield expansion. High-yield expansion minimized the total area required to achieve production but counter-intuitively at higher expense to forests than low-yield plantations. The results show that high-yield agriculture is an important but insufficient strategy to reduce pressure on forests. We suggest that high-yield agriculture can be effective in sparing forests only if coupled with incentives for agricultural expansion into already cleared lands.

Amazonian agroforestry: a market-oriented system in Peru

Most reports on indigenous agroforestry systems of the Amazon region have described patterns employed by tribal groups almost exclusively for their own subsistence. This article discusses a market-oriented cyclic agroforestry system practiced by non-tribal ‘Mestizo’ farmers in Tamshiyacu, Peru. The system produces charcoal, as well as annual, semi-perennial, and perennial crops for local consumption, and for a regional market. The sale of these products provides a substantial cash income for many farmers. The data presented demonstrate that Amazonian cyclic agroforestry systems are capable of being commercially successful enterprises and of serving as possible models for further agricultural development.ResumenLa mayoria de informes sobre sistemas agroforestales indígenas de la regíon amazónica han descrito formas utilizadas por grupos nativos casi exclusivamente para su subsistencia. Este artículo trata de un sistema agroforestal cíclico comercial empleado por agricultores mestizos en Tamshiyacu, Perú. Este sistema produce carbón, huertos anuales, semi-perennes y perennes para el consumo local y para el mercado regional. La venta de estos productos da un ingreso considerable a muchos agricultores. Los datos presentados demuestran que sistemas agroforestales amazónicos pueden tener valor comercial y servir de modelos eventuales para el desarrollo agrícola.

Seed exchange networks for agrobiodiversity conservation. A review.

The circulation of seed among farmers is central to agrobiodiversity conservation and dynamics. Agrobiodiversity, the diversity of agricultural systems from genes to varieties and crop species, from farming methods to landscape composition, is part of humanity’s cultural heritage. Whereas agrobiodiversity conservation has received much attention from researchers and policy makers over the last decades, the methods available to study the role of seed exchange networks in preserving crop biodiversity have only recently begun to be considered. In this overview, we present key concepts, methods, and challenges to better understand seed exchange networks so as to improve the chances that traditional crop varieties (landraces) will be preserved and used sustainably around the world. The available literature suggests that there is insufficient knowledge about the social, cultural, and methodological dimensions of environmental change, including how seed exchange networks will cope with changes in climates, socio-economic factors, and family structures that have supported seed exchange systems to date. Methods available to study the role of seed exchange networks in the preservation and adaptation of crop specific and genetic diversity range from meta-analysis to modelling, from participatory approaches to the development of bio-indicators, from genetic to biogeographical studies, from anthropological and ethnographic research to the use of network theory. We advocate a diversity of approaches, so as to foster the creation of robust and policy-relevant knowledge. Open challenges in the study of the role of seed exchange networks in biodiversity conservation include the development of methods to (i) enhance farmers’ participation to decision-making in agro-ecosystems, (ii) integrate ex situ and in situ approaches, (iii) achieve interdisciplinary research collaboration between social and natural scientists, and (iv) use network analysis as a conceptual framework to bridge boundaries among researchers, farmers and policy makers, as well as other stakeholders.

Economic development, land use and biodiversity change in the tropical mountains of Xishuangbanna, Yunnan, Southwest China

The Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture, located in southwestern China is an area of great biological and cultural diversity. While the region has long been a dynamic one, the past 50 years have witnessed changes in the state of the biodiversity of Xishuangbanna at an unprecedented pace and scale. Due to a number of trends including demographic growth, as well as abrupt shifts in land use and economic policies, agricultural patterns have changed substantially. These shifts have resulted not only in a decline and fragmentation of forest areas, but also in changes in the practice of swidden-fallow agriculture. This paper employs a variety of published data, combined with original information derived from field research in Xishuangbanna villages, to draw attention to these trends and discuss their implications for biodiversity, including agricultural biodiversity.

PATTERNS AND MANAGEMENT OF AGROFORESTRY SYSTEMS IN YUNNAN - AN APPROACH TO UPLAND RURAL-DEVELOPMENT

Characterized by great cultural and environmental diversity, Chinas South-Western Yunnan Province supports an exceptionally rich and dynamic agrodiversity. Since 1990 the Traditional Land Management Systems (TLM) Research Programme has researched change, variation, and adaptability of Yunnans little studied agroforestry systems in four different areas. Research efforts focus on the interplay between these agroforestry systems, shifting land and resource rights, rural government policies, indigenous management, demographic change, and market conditions, The authors review agrodiversity in Yunnan by briefly highlighting specific forms of agrodiversity and by examining in-depth the transition of Zhuoxi Village farmers, a TLM research area, from swidden agriculture to a predominantly agroforestry based economy.