ABSTRACT
Slash-and-burn cultivation, a land use that consists of clearing and burning vegetation on a piece of land, planting and harvesting crops, and repeating these operations after a fallow period of varying length, has been practised in many regions of the world since the beginning of agriculture. It is still practised today, mostly in low-income tropical countries (Palm et al 2005). It is a sustainable land use when the fallow is sufficiently long to reconstitute significant biomass and nutrient stocks, but often leads to land degradation when the population density is incompatible with long fallowing (Palm et al 2005). Since the Earth Summit held at Rio in 1992, the search for alternatives to slash-and-burn has become prominent among organisations supporting agricultural development and environmental conservation. The Global Environment Facility, for instance, funded an ambitious international, collaborative effort – the Alternative to Slash-and-Burn (ASB) Programme – coordinated by the World Agroforestry Centre and launched in 1991.
