How Did Shifting Cultivation Impact Social, Environmental, and Economical Aspects of Southeast Asia?

The cultivation of rice has had an enormous impact on the natural biome. Rice has affected the natural biome that it is grown in, in a devastating way. It has caused the natural biomes to deteriorate and caused the natural way of life to collapse leaving no place for the native animals and plants. But what would happen if the cultivation of rice stopped and the natural biomes returned to their former glory? What would happen to all those people depending on rice for the next meal? Those who depend on rice to pay for and keep their families alive? This report looks at the where, effects, who and how of rice cultivation.

Agricultural Revolution occurred in many different regions of the world, including Fertile Crescent and Mesoamerica. Fertile Crescent, where the revolution first occurred in 9000-7000 B.C.E, was located in present-day Iraq, Syria, Israel, Palestine, and Southern Turkey. Mesoamerica, located in present-day Mexico, had the revolution occurred about 6000 years later since the agriculture started in the Fertile Crescent. Numerous differences between two different regions from different hemispheres show why Fertile Crescent had advantages over Mesoamerica in terms of Agriculture.

The transition from the traditional hunter gatherer societies, in to an agriculture based living system, has allowed humans to increase their population size, putting strains on the Earth’s environment. Agriculture has also brought along with it a decrease in women’s roles in the community, while also bringing about a class system where the wealthy rule, and were the weak and poor obey. As humans began to domesticate more plants and animals, they settled in permanent areas. The Change from hunter gatherer benefited few, but had dire consequences for the earth and groups with in it. One such consequence was the population increase, which has lead to major issues throughout history, and one that has ties to current global issues.

In the beginning of mankind's evolutionary history, being nomadic was a common practice of living because following migratory herds and gathering for other edible plants was a necessity for survival. It wasn’t until approximately 8,000 B.C. when people started to learn how to grow crops in a single spot without soil depletion and thus, agriculture was born. (New World Encyclopedia 2015) This major advancement in humankind allowed humans to form civilizations and transformed the way humans live that is the sprawling society that exists today. With ever expanding cities and the population growing at an exponential rate, humans need an abundance of agricultural land to support the world's rising demands. The effect of human's stationary lifestyle

There were many changes and continuities in East Asia, in the relationship of religion and politics from 1450-1750. One main change is the “kaozheng”, or research based on evidence; which led to much critisism of the Neo- Confucian orthodoxy. A main continuity was the system of Neo- Confuciasm, which continued during the Ming and Qing dynasties in China.

Plants in a area may have stopped people in that area from domesticating the plants, 12 plants account for 80% of the world’s food tonnage

The land devoted to palm oil has increased even tripled. ”From 1990 to 2000, the area of land devoted to palm oil production tripled in Indonesia from 1 to 3 million hectares(2.5 million acres to 7.4 million acres.) The Indonesian government plans to increase palm oil production to 27 million acres which is half of Oregon's size.” So many trees are disappearing out of nowhere and

Forest destruction has threatened traditional systems of land management and inflicted poverty, pollution, and social disintegration on once thriving communities. As forest resources, have become depleted, economic pressures have driven young villagers to leave their communities in search of employment.

The restriction to the local people for the use of forest products and timber logging can increase the demand for these products and market value. The control of the deforestation and degradation in REDD+ site increases the agricultural land crisis and demand for the land. Studies indicate that cross-border leakage is a major problem in many areas. In Vietnam between 1987 and 2006, about 39% of the forest cover was recovered, which was balanced by the forest loss in the neighboring countries including Lao PDR, Cambodia, and Indonesia (Barlow, et. al., 2012). The conservation or restoration project in the REDD+ areas without considering the immediate or underlying causes of forest loss can be more prone to leakage (Miles and Dickson, 2010) causing deforestation elsewhere to meet the demand for agricultural products and forest needs (Barlow, et. al., 2012).

The rate of deforestation is increasing and the tropical forests are falling at approximately 140,000 acres per day (Miller & Tangley 1991: xvi). The forests are crucial to the environment. They are important in minimizing erosion, providing a stable habitat for many animals, and helping to keep the environment clean. Deforestation has devastating effects, not only on the biological dependents within the depleted forests, but also on the surrounding human-populated communities.

      Due to the effects of urbanization and industry, the amount of land available for agriculture is rapidly reducing. Of the total land area of 792,607 hectares for Negros Occidental (the Philippines) the Alienable and Disposable (A & D) areas covers 68.17 percent 0r 540,350.13 hectares. Classified Forest Land occupies 31.83 percent ( 252,256.53 hectares). Cropland makes up most of which is considered Alienable and Disposable. This includes the residential, commercial and institutional areas as well as agricultural lands. Fish ponds are also found in this area occupying an area of 9,333.14 hectares. Zoning and land use plans have been put into place to regulate the development of communities ensuring that the distribution of land is properly allocated so that it is not in incompatible use. Despite these measures, many farmers are very poor. The average size of an individual farm in the Philippines is 1.5. hectares. Small farms can only produce enough for subsistence purposes.

The first negative ramification of agriculture to be examined is habitat destruction. While societies were able to stay in one place in order to cultivate the land, as these groups grew, there was also an increase in the amount of land necessary to produce enough food to feed everyone. In order to acquire the amount of land needed for farming, other parts of the surrounding habitat were destroyed. In some cases, this meant demolishing wooded areas to use lumber to build shelter, or just clearing out the trees—and the animals and other plants that relied upon them for survival—in order to gain

When it comes to intensive farming systems, many rural farmers face a trade-off between agricultural production and biodiversity . In order to protect the biodiversity, farmers must sacrifice agricultural production. Hence, the challenge is to continuously expand food production while bearing no negative effects on biodiversity. These negative effects widely include deforestation, disrupting ecosystem integrity and species viability. In light of these issues, better farming technologies and natural resource management practices along with improved agricultural policies are required. This brings up the question of how to protect wild species and conserve habitat while increasing agricultural production and farmer’s incomes?

Paudel, N.S. (2011). Community-based forestry and livelihoods in the context of climate change adaptation. Asia-Pacific Network for Global Change Research. Retrieved from www.apn-gcr.org/resources/files/original/739eb6475f3e968e78217a6975131598.pdf

Land-use patterns have changed over millennia, but the most dramatic transformations have taken place over the last 300 years. The modification of the earth by human action mainly involved impacts on the soils and biotic resources central to the agricultural base. Land transformation did not abate, but rather accelerated and diversified with the onset of the Industrial Revolution, the globalisation of the world economy, and the expansion of population and technological capacity. From 1700 to 1980, globally about 1.2 billion ha forest were converted to arable land. Large regional variations exist in the relationship between population growth and expansion of arable land due to the specific of Asian, European, and new continental system of agriculture and their respective paths of agricultural productivity increases.