High and dry

Peter Kurt Hansen and 90 year-old humorist

Leaving farmers high and dry

In a book researching
Shifting cultivation
It would be immeticulous
Not to say perfidious
If we were not to abstract
The long-term land-use impact
Of research publications
And network contemplations

The scientific exploration
Researching shifting cultivation
Has truly churned out publications
And elevated expectations
But technocratic magic bullets
With farmers lives play Russian Roulette

But why are farmers still insisting
That agriculture should be shifting?
Are they forever doomed to slavery
To agricultural vagabondary?

For many years thought primitive
It’s now considered punitive
To criticise the ancient wisdom
Of people seeking swidden sanctum

The fact of swidden cultivation
It’s closely linked to near starvation
As agricultural rotation
For fertility restoration
Is fraught by growing population
And hapless land-use regulation

Alas, increasing population
And land-use regulations
Through top-down legislation
Threatens shifting cultivation
Could the hope for restoration
Come from research deliberation?

The technological delivery
From agro-scientific inquiry
Has so far not been valedictory
To swidden farmers’ land use misery
Because alternatives prove slippery
In marginal mountain periphery

I am not hereby discounting
The importance of researching
But evidence is mounting
That what is really counting
Is changes that makes sense to farmers
And not the research council charmers

Many years of earnest search
In agricultural research
In ways to stop the swidden farmer
From cutting down the precious arbour
Is yet to yield technology
Farmers think is honky-dory

The hope that agroforestry
Would somehow change reality
Became a quasi travesty
When no one turned to adoptee
But carried on the former ways
With fields and forests all ablaze

Hedgerows, trashlines, alley farming
To farmers surely seem alarming
When fitted into working schedules
Of toil and sweat with simple tools
Despite the scientific proof
That top soil carbon stays aloof
When half the land is occupied
With shrubby legumes as prescribed

Researching novel germplasm
Is not a futile phantasm
But making ten tons of cereal
The hope since time immemorial
Depends on additional factors
Soil and rain and pests and labours

Integrated livestock systems
Cut-and-carry pasturalism
Is still defying older wisdom
That swidden abolition hinge on
A proper appreciation
Of farmers’ rationalization

Now carbon sequestration
A fundable creation
That could prevent migration
If modes of certification
Lead to capitalization
Halting shifting cultivation

This scientific hanky-panky
Has justified the policy
Of phasing out the swidden farmer
Turned her into a decliner
Of scientific modernity
A backward quaint minority

The lack of land-use adaptations
Shows the need for modification
To our scientific efforts
In published academic reports
Where regurgitated findings
Reappear in novel bindings 

By leaving farmers high and dry
It’s really hard to justify
The money spent researching
When little is emerging
That has helped the swidden farmer
Dropping out as global warmer

We need not Nobel laureates
Or donor funded graduates
With PhDs in theory
When what is really necessary
Is the simple logic consequence
Of what we know from evidence

Do not attend another workshop
To learn the latest donor flip-flop
And novel ODA rhetoric
Which will in due time prove a gimmick
The latest fad in prolongation
Developmental continuation

Instead stay with the farmers
And ask them their desires
For a future in the hills
And in the process get the skills
To help the people realize
Their dreams for better mountain life

Breaking the swidden cycles
Requires land use titles
To land that offers prospect
Of permanent allotment
Otherwise it is for sure
We will lack a certain cure
For the swidden masses
Making green house gasses

Assist the swidden communities
Fight for equal opportunities
Of tribals and indigenous
So they can stay imperfidious
To ancient cultural heritage
Proven land-use parentage

We also need more education
To stop the shifting cultivation
On forest slopes in Asia
A local intelligentsia
Who will stand up for local rights
So villagers can reunite

Schools are needed in the equation
Since 5 years into education
No one will consider chopping
Forest land for staple cropping
So this is the viable option
Youngsters adept at adapting
To life of their own aspiration
Appropriate modernization

With farmers properly empowered
The role of research may be recovered
As they will be an equal partner
And not a hapless swidden gardener
Forever at the receiving ends
Of developmental experiments

But should we be successful
It may seem quite regretful
To the earnest participant observer
That the ennobled shifting cultivator
Has changed the axe and digging sticks
For Chinese television rigs