ABSTRACT
The grass Imperata cylindrica, which is one of the major volunteer species to emerge after forest clearing in Southeast Asia and a frequent component of swidden fallows, is widely regarded as a troublesome weed and an inefficient land cover. Government policies, which, from colonial times to the present 1 have single-mindedly aimed at eliminating swidden farming, have seized upon the belief that invasive grassy weeds are favored by the opening of the forest canopy and have linked the existence of grasslands with “improper shifting cultivation practices” (Soerjani 1970). During the 1970s and early 1980s there was some reconsideration in Indonesia of the potential usefulness of Imperata grasslands for agricultural settlement and grazing activities (Soewardi 1976; Soerjatna and McIntosh 1980; Soewardi and Sastradipradja 1980; Burbridge et al. 1981). It was even suggested as a means of controlling erosion (Soepardi 1980). However, attitudes to Imperata have now hardened. While anthropologists and geographers have drawn attention to the deliberate creation, maintenance, and management of grasslands by local people (Seavoy 1975; Sherman 1980; Dove 1981, 1984, 1986), such insights have had little influence on the policies of planners and funding agencies. The push during the 1990s in Indonesia for extensive planting of industrial forests to supply pulp and paper plants redirected energies toward reforesting grasslands and minimizing their value. Local protests were ignored or sidestepped (Brookfield et al. 1995; Potter 1997). There have been similar pressures throughout Southeast Asia, favoring reforestation with plantations of exotics such as Acacia mangium or Eucalyptus camaldulensis. In addition to the pressures noted above, there is competition from export crops, especially tree crops such as oil palm, rubber, coffee, and cocoa; more intensive agroforestry has been widely promoted, using tree legumes as an alternative to swiddening; and forest conservation has emerged in recent times as a “runaway issue” (Fraser 1989). All have intensified the perception that grasslands are a degraded form of vegetation that must be replaced.
