Implications of slash-and-burn agriculture with rotation and fallow lands in traditional agricultural systems: A reviewMany cultures around the world manage a great diversity of agroecosystems through traditional practices like ‘slash-and-burn agriculture’. Our review systematizes research on these systems, focusing on the rotation and fallow of lands managed over time and space by Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities in different parts of the world. We discuss the implications of these systems for the dynamics of biodiversity, agrobiodiversity, food security, soil characteristics, biomass, and carbon fluxes in the soil, vegetation, and atmosphere. We conclude that this agricultural practice has positive impacts on maintaining biological diversity and agrobiodiversity, also playing a significant role in reducing soil erosion and restoring soil natural fertility, raising pH, the dynamics of nutrient cycling, and carbon accumulation. The length of fallow is the main predictor of carbon stocks and their rate of accumulation in secondary forests, since repeated burning and more intensive cultivation can extend the time required for this accumulation and are not recommended. Understanding and strengthening this agriculture and improving it with agroecological approaches is more beneficial than simply criminalizing and diminishing its importance for the traditional groups that practice it, for the conservation of agrobiodiversity, and for the delivery of agroecosystem services to society at large.
Keywords:
Agroecosystems; Fire management; Food security; Shifting cultivation; Swidden