Presented by Grace Wong, from the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), at the Resilience 2017 conference in Stockholm (Sweden), August 20-23, 2017.

1. Trapped in the margins of Southeast Asia:
Swidden farmers struggling to cope
Grace Wong, Maria Brockhaus, Moira Moeliono,
Indah Waty, Cynthia Maharani, Shintia Arwida,
Pham Thu Thuy, Rob Cole, Le Ngoc Dung

2. Research context
• Swidden (shifting cultivation) is a prevalent land use in frontier forests and
uplands throughout Southeast Asia
• A marginalized form of land use, both politically and socio-economically
• Also traditionally a biologically diverse, locally managed landscape of
forest-agriculture mosaics … but this is changing
• Placed within a highly dynamic region in terms of economic growth, trade,
movement of finance, migration, and environmental change
Are farmers “trapped” within the swidden socio-ecological systems?
Extending analysis beyond the persistent state of the poor swidden farmer in
declining ecological conditions towards understanding the broader
mechanisms and institutions that influence and/ or reinforce traps (Haider
et al. 2017, Boonstra and de Boer 2014)

3. Research sites
• Sites: West Kalimantan, Indonesia (4 villages) and Houaphan, Laos (3
villages)
• Swidden communities who are/have been actively managing forest-
agriculture land use mosaics in frontier regions, near protected areas
• Highly different social-cultural contexts and political systems between the
two countries

4. Changing agriculture landscapes
Kalimantan
• Swidden is still a prevalent land
use, practiced by over 75% of
hholds
• Despite expanding oil palm and
rubber plantations (-23% forests
and +430% plantations since 2000)
• Land is maintained for fallows as
part of a cultural heritage
• Rely on extensive use of fertilizers
(50%) and herbicides (83%)
Houaphan
• Swidden is losing hold (32% of
hholds), largely due to illegality and
land reallocation policies which
restrict fallows and reinforce
degradation
• Replaced with corn for markets in
China and Vietnam, as livestock feed
(-16% forests and +77% annual crop
fields since 2000)
• Little use of inputs but high
dependence on commercial seeds

5. Initial results on shocks and coping
• Swidden farmers face a wide range of shocks:
• market factors (prices!) in Kalimantan
• environment factors (drought, pests) in Houaphan
• Shocks are largely co-variate, perceived to be a prolonged event and
commonly occurring
• Primary coping strategies include off-farm wage labor (Kalimantan) and
increased reliance on forest resources (Houaphan)
Early evidence that Houaphan farmers
appear more vulnerable and “trapped”
in perpetual shock-and-coping cycles
Data collected by CIFOR ASFCC project, 2016
0.00
10.00
20.00
30.00
40.00
50.00
60.00
70.00
80.00
90.00
100.00
Kalimantan Houaphan
Are coping strategies adequate?
No
Yes, partially
Yes, fully

6. Some thoughts on coping and traps
Development aid as old wine
in new bottles “…we
undertake the poverty
reduction, shifting cultivation
stabilization initiatives, … still
the old job but with a new
concept”
Discourses that constrain, or
pre-define, possible choices
and alternatives: swidden as
“environmentally destructive”
and an “impediment to
progress and development”
Cole et al. 2017, Salk et al . 2016, Kallio et al. 2016

7. Some thoughts on coping and traps
Rapid conversion to cash
crops and agriculture/
landscape homogeneity
(rubber and maize in
Houaphan), vulnerability to
crop diseases and boom-
and-bust cycles
Narratives of modernization
and available “unused” land
to support transnational
investments into
commercial crops, cross-
border markets for crops
and wage labor
Cole et al. 2017, Salk et al . 2016, Kallio et al. 2016

8. For more information on the research:
www.cifor.org/asfcc
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