What are some alternatives to slash and burn agriculture?

Question

I have a project due on slash and burn agriculture in South America. So currently my main focus is on the pros and cons of slash and burn agriculture. I know that there are global associations dedicated to preventing slash and burn, but so far I haven't read anything about alternatives to destroying the rain forrest. The only thing so far is crop and land rotation, but the only problem with that is that you still have to destroy a part of the land to get the field for the crops. So any ideas on alternatives that you or a global association created would be helpful. Also, if you get the ideas from an association, the name of the association would be highly appreciated.

Answer 1

I live in the midwest (wisconsin) and I have farmed and all of my family farms. They need to utilize there terrain better, they are destroying the rain forest because it is mostly flat plain. If you ask a farmer here which piece of land he would wrather purchace a flat piece or a hilly piece, they will alwas choose the hilly land because of the hills they can plant more crops. Think of a bed sheat - lay it flat on the floor and look at the size of it, now stick a chair or a garbage pail under the center to create a "hill". Notice how the area that the sheet takes up has gone down but the useable area of the 'land' has not. They are just going for the easy land that they can work with laborers not with tractors, etc...

Answer 2

yes but some times nooooooooooooo

Answer 3

Brazil nuts.

Brazil nuts grow on Brazil nut trees. Brazil nut trees grow in rainfoersts containing millions of animal and plant species, most of which rely on one another in some way. If the forest around a Brazil nut tree is removed, the tree does not produce any nuts. The reason is that the flowers are polinated by a female bee who needs to feed her young Brazil nut tree pollen. The bee got pregnant because she was attracted to a male bee by scent. It was not his own phermones however, but the essential oil of a Gongorga orchid. The orchids are very rare and this tells the female the male had to fly a long way and is fit and healthy. After the flowers are fertilized, an enormous fruit matures. It weighs 40 pounds and has a shell an inch thich. No animal in the forest has jaws strong enough to crush such a fruit to release the nuts. However, one small rodent, the Agouti, has ratlike teeth and can gnaw holes in the fruit. It then collects the nuts and what it can't eat, it buries like a squirrel. Some of the nuts then germinate and the forest floor is carpeted by young Brazil nut trees waiting for a mature tree to fall. If this happens, the patch of light triggers rapid growth in one of the lucky seedlings. It grows into another mature Brazil nut tree in about 200 years.

Despite the abundance of life in the rainforest, rainforest soil is amoungst the poorest in the world. This is because things are recycled so rapidly in the forest, all the nutrients are contained in the living bodies of the organisms. If the Brazil nut trees, the Gongorga orchids, the bees and Agoutis are removed, the land sustains only a few agricultural harvests and is then suitable only for ranching. In many areas however, with the plant cover gone, erosion can wash what remains of the forest soil into rivers, polluting them with silt.

The Brazil nut industry is responcible for preserving many acres of virgin Rain forest. Sadly, most western ecology is an excersize in "do as I say, not as I do (or did)." Eastern North America was once covered in the world's largest temperate rain forest. Oaks actually were 10 feet in diameter. Now all these old trees are extinct. The soil they made is still there however. Unlike a tropical forest, temperate forests have a dormant season. Organic matter accumulates and forms a thick layer of humus. This, and the climate, gives North America the most productive agricultural land on the planet.  It also makes this country rich and powerful. If we lost all our corn and soybeans, America would essentially be a third world country.

Answer 4

Cutting an area of trees but not burning them.  You turn them into mulch and let them compost and decay then you have plenty of nitrogen and phosphate.  Also  pot ash is just able to be seen when you burn the material,  in reality  it is in the wood and brush at all times. So when people say that you need to slash and burn to get the pot ash into the soil, they are full of c**p.  The molecules that form pot ash are always in there even when you turn the brush and wood into chippings and compost.  The real reason why they do slash and burn is because it is quick and easier than cutting up all that brush and wood and making it into chippings.  Now, where people can't afford chippers they can still cut the logs into manageable pieces and turn them into compost, it will just take longer.  Also it is not required to cut down all the trees in order to have fields to farm.  It is actually quite necessary to have wind breaks so the top soil does not blow away, and yes the same winds that caused the dust bowl in the mid west can do the same in the tropics specifically Central and South America.  So when all that heat is given off from slash and burn you are actually wasting precious energy that you can use for your crops to grow.  Thus if you are more efficient with the soil and fields that you do have, then there is no need or not as much a need to go and cut down more rainforest, rain forests that are important and that the world needs.

Answer 5

i have read that slash and burn of the rain isnt the prevailing practice, although it does happen. there is a massive amount of brush land that is much easier to clear and more suited to be converted to farm land.  i believe that there is another economic  incentive to clear rain forest, but i havent the slightest idea what it would be.

Answer 6

Slash and burn agriculture is practiced in third world countries were it is the only method available to them to farm.  A farmer will cut an area of trees and bush that he is going to farm, let it dry for several months and burn it off.  The ash provides the fertility for his crop.  He can only clear as much as he can chop by hand.  After farming the area about two years he then has to slash and burn a new area.  Slash and burn agriculture agriculture is not what that is destroying the rain forest.  It is the large scale clearing of land by modern machinery.  They are clearing hundreds of acres at a time.  The areas cut by the slash and burn farmers are allowed to grow back into trees and bush after they are abandoned, while the cleared acres are out of the forest permanently.  They may be piling the trees from the forest and burning them but this is not what is called slash and burn agriculture.