ABSTRACT
This chapter presents recent research on contemporary shifting cultivation. The cultivation and fallow periods are there seen to flow into one another in important ways. The term 'shifting cultivation' describes land-rotational systems that clearly fall outside Mertz-defined swidden, but which keep a significant period of fallow intended to restore the fertility of the land. In the western Pacific region, which has been the main focus of the chapter, rapid change came at several times and it has never ceased since a succession of new crops of American origin began to arrive in the 16th and 17th centuries. It is for this reason that the author have tried to write not in support of the system as such, but rather of the farmers who practise swidden or did so in the past, or have never used the swidden option even while using other land-rotational methods. What is involved is not indigenous fallow management as narrowly such, but rather management-into-the-fallow (MIF).
