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1) Short Description of the Shifting Cultivation in the World
From ancient times in Korean peninsula, it has long been carried out the primitive system of shifting cultivation what is called the Hoachôn (it means a slashand burn field) for the purpose of cultivating crops at the burned field after the forest was felled and burned and then, it is called Hoachôn-min (it means the burned field farmer) who is cultivating the burned field for a few cropping until it becomes exhausted6.17·18.33-43).
In fact, however, there is no more new burned field except the existing fields below 20° in slope being cultivated by inhabitants since most of the burned fields has been readjusted by the government of Korea from 1960's or later18.24'.
This type of land utilization is probably corresponded to what is called a substitute upland type of cultivation methods or land use patterns - substitute upland, alternative husbandry, system of rotation crop and horticultural type.
The slash - and - burn method of clearing tropical woody vegetation, which anthropologist now call swidden cultivation when it is associated with shifting cultivation, is mainly distributed in the southeast Asia such as India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Melanesia, Thailand and etc.1.4»8.40).
In the southeast Asia, it is cutting the forest of about 5 millions acres for the shifting cultivation every year and it is said that the gross area of the burned field or fallow lands becomes about 4-50 millions acres, a third of all the farming land in these regions4.40).
It has been conducted in Japan, the so-called Yakihata or KaM which is cultivating the burned field for miscellaneous grain crops during three or four years after clearing, drying and burning of tree and grass, leaving it fallow for about ten years and then, it becomes tree and grass grown well, it re-utilized the field for crops as the same method10,36,41).
However, this type of agricultural managment has been carried out at only the hilly regions as a cultivated method from Tokugawa through Meiji periods, but this Yakihata cultivation was suddenly reduced because of plentiful food production from around Showa 30 years and it is usually utilized as a farmland for commercial products like radish, foxtail millet, Japanese millet and etc.41'48*.
The shifting cultivation, the so-called...