Question

What is shifting agriculture?

Answer 1

Hint: Agriculture is the study, art, and practice of growing plants and raising livestock. Agriculture was a key development in the rise of sedentary human civilization, as it produced food surpluses that allowed people to live in cities.

Complete answer:
Shifting cultivation is an agricultural system in which a plot of land is cultivated for a short period and then abandoned, allowing post-disturbance fallow vegetation to grow freely while the cultivator moves on to another plot. When the soil shows signs of exhaustion or, more commonly, when the field is overrun by weeds, the period of cultivation is usually terminated. The amount of time that a field is cultivated is usually shorter than the period over which the land is allowed to regenerate by lying fallow.

In shifting agriculture, migrants abandon cleared to land after two or three years of producing vegetable and grain crops on it for another plot. Slash-and-burn methods are commonly used to clear land—trees, bushes, and forests are slashed, and the remaining vegetation is burned. The ashes enrich the soil with potassium. The seeds are then sown after the rains.

Shifting cultivation is a type of agriculture or a cultivation system in which a minority of 'fields' are under cultivation at any given time and the majority are in various stages of natural re-growth. Over time, fields are cultivated for a relatively short period and then allowed to recover, or fallow, for a relatively long period. A previously cultivated field will eventually be cleared of the natural vegetation and planted in crops again.

Note: By the common era, shifting cultivation was no longer practiced in Italy. Tacitus describes it as a peculiar cultivation method used by the Germans. In 98 CE, he wrote about the Germans, saying that their fields were proportional to the number of cultivators who participated, but their crops were distributed based on status. Because of their wide availability, distribution was simple; they changed fields annually, with much to spare because they were producing grain rather than other crops.