ABSTRACT
Acknowledgments ..................................................................................................................... 406
References ................................................................................................................................... 406
The world’s increasing human population and the demand for the elimination of poverty
and hunger lead to ever-increasing pressures on the planet’s diverse ecosystems. The
richer societies of the industrialized world want to see the remaining areas of tropical
forests and other natural ecosystems preserved with their biodiversity intact. In the Third
World, the model of land use for agriculture has been either the intensification of slash-
and-burn systems, with decreasing fallow periods and resulting decline in soil fertility,
or the continuous clearing of new land, followed by intensive exploitation and then
abandonment (Boddey et al., 2003).
