This volume offers the first detailed description of 'composite swiddening,' a traditional Southeast Asian upland agricultural system that combines shifting cultivation fields on the hillsides with irrigated paddy fields in the valleys. The book is a product of research over a 15-year period by natural and social scientists in Vietnam's Tat Hamlet, a Da Bac Tay ethnic minority community, and it challenges the conventional belief that shifting cultivation inevitably causes deforestation. It describes this complex agroecosystem in terms of its multiple individual components, structure, functioning, and sustainability; social and economic dimensions; adaptation to on-going demographic, economic, environmental, and policy changes; and wider use elsewhere in Vietnam's northern mountains. It will be of interest to Southeast Asian area studies specialists, agricultural ecologists, ethnologists, and upland development policymakers.

Awards

Silver prize in the Vietnamese Publishers Association annual national book awards, 2010

About Editors and Authors

Tran Duc Vien

Tran Duc Vien is Senior Researcher at the Hanoi University of Agriculture in Vietnam. He specializes in the studies of swidden cultivation and tropical forest management in Southeast Asia.

A. Terry Rambo

A. Terry Rambo is Special Professor at the International Graduate Program on System Approaches in Agriculture, Khon Kaen University, Visiting Professor at Hanoi Agricultural University, Vietnam, and EWC Adjunct Fellow in the field of Environment Study in the EWC Research Program. From 2000 to 2004, he was Professor at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University. He has lived in Southeast Asia for many years, conducting research and teaching in Vietnam, Thailand and Malaysia. His specialty is human ecology and his research interests include upland development in Vietnam, environmental perception, sustainable land use and global environmental policies.

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