Relocating plants from swidden fallows to gardens in Southwestern China |
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Authors: | Yongneng Fu Huijun Guo Aiguo Chen Jinyun Cui Christine Padoch |
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Institution: | (1) Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanic Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Mengla Yunnan, China;(2) Institute of Economic Botany, New York Botanical Garden, 10458-5126 Bronx, NY, U.S.A. |
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Abstract: | As upland farmers in Southeast Asia change from shifting cultivation to permanent agriculture and lose access to swidden-fallow
forests and their resources, they are introducing economically important forest and fallow plants into their house gardens.
We describe this process in Daka, a village of Hani ethnicity in Yunnan Province, China. Daka smallholders collect both seeds
and seedlings from fallow forests and transfer the plants to house gardens, initiating the transformation of wild species
to a cultivated or semi-domesticated one. Two kinds of species are commonly transferred from swidden fallows to house gardens.
Some are particularly rare, others are plants in great demand. Between 1998 and 2000 Daka households earned an average of
US$68.20 annually from the products of fallow forests. We also found that villagers harvest and use 76 plant species from
fallow forests and 126 species from house gardens. Twenty-two species found in house gardens that had been transferred from
fallow forests. Households vary widely in the frequency with which they engage in this pattern. We believe that local knowledge
of these practices is a potentially important resource in the development of other areas of smallholder farming. |
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Keywords: | plant transfer fallow forests house gardens smallholder farmers Xishuangbanna Hani China |
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