Stabilizing shifting agriculture

This strategy features in the framework of Agenda 21 as formulated at UNCED (Rio de Janeiro, 1992), now coordinated by the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development and implemented through national and local authorities. Agenda 21 recommends limiting and ultimately halting destructive shifting cultivation by addressing the underlying social and ecological causes.

1. What else can shifting cultivators do for a living that will allow them to exploit their environments on an ecologically-sound, sustained-yield basis, and yet satisfy both their subsistence needs and their market wants? The answer is arboriculture, or tree-crop farming - cultivation of coconuts, bananas, fruit trees, and the like.

1. Strengthening traditional sustainable agriculture
2. Stabilizing
3. Improving management systems for highland valleys
4. Expanding practical agricultural options

1. Developing alternatives to tropical slash-and-burn

1. Protecting forests
2. Demonstrating new agricultural methods

1. Coping with soil deficiency

1. Using swidden-fallow land management

1. Underdevelopment of countries
2. Stagnated development of agricultural production

1. Stability
2. Instability
3. Destructiveness