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