PART II

Pichon, F. S.A. Vosti, and J. Witcover, “Determinants of Land-Use Practices in the Humid Tropics: Farm-Level Evidence from Ecuador.” The International Food Policy Research Institute, Washington, DC, 1992.

Farmers in the humid tropics, it is often suggested, move through roughly the same progression of land-use patterns over time, constrained by a “straitjacket” of ecological determinism. Occupation of forest lands necessarily requires some initial deforestation to establish ownership; using the land for annual food crops meets immediate food needs. As soils deplete, the argument runs, farmers must clear additinal forest for annual crop production, and dedicate previously cleared lands to perennial crops. As soil nutrient levels continue to fall on all cropped land, farmers shift both perennial and annual crops onto more recently deforested lands, leaving initially deforested acres to pasture and/or fallow. In this way, farmers, driven by environmental constraints and survival needs, and the absence of affordable and/or available technology, supposedly have little choice but to encroach more and more on forested land (p.10).

Still according to the same text:

Item 0 - It is argued that farmers fall new forest for annual crop production while leaving previously cleared area to perennial crops.