Slash & burn: Why do Indonesians still do it?

The news right now is full of articles about the SE Asian ‘haze’, which blankets part of the region, in wood smoke, created for the most part in Kalimantan and Sumatra.

Reasons behind the haze are the clearing of jungle for farmland and the burning off of crop waste. How are these a part of Indonesian customs? Let’s look at farming in Indonesia.

There are 2 main systems of cultivation used in Indonesia, sawah and ladang.

Sawah is wet rice cultivation, whereby the terrain is terraced into level layers. This technique can be used up to 1,600 meters above sea level. You usually find sawah in monsoon areas of the low-lying plain, where water is abundant. Tabanan in SW Bali is a good example, and water flows 365 days a year.

Sawah is an intense form of farming, it demands rich soil, plentiful rainfall and sunshine, huge amounts of labor, to construct and maintain, and an organized water supply system. In Bali that system is called the subak.

Ladang means a shifting cultivation system. People using this basic system, use simple tools, to cultivate a section of dry land for food. Maybe 40% of Indonesians take part in ladang farming in some way.

The way ladang works, is unirrigated land is prepared by slashing and burning jungle. It is then cleared and planted with a selection of fast growing food crops. Ladang farmers will work in rows, going uphill anf over rough ground and other impediments. Men will poke holes in the ground with sharp sticks, while the women will follow, dropped rice seeds into the hole.

Ladang farming is less productive per hectare, than sawah and needs about 10 times the area to produce the same volume of food. It is practiced on soil that is unsuitable for sawah, such as the non-volcanic and will be exhausted in 2 years. The land is then left to the jungle for 10 years, allowing the farmer to return once more. If the jungle does re-grow and the area is covered by alang alang grass, the soil will be permanently unsuitable for farming.

In Indonesia, ladang farmers tend to live in permanent villages, rather than following a nomdadic lifestlye. Ladang farming is especially popular in the drier eastern islands such as Flores, Timor and parts of Sulawesi.

Here in Bali, if you go to the Bukit peninsula, you will see a vastly different style of farming, basically cattle and a few crops. Also is East Bali, there is a point where the rice belt stops and the corn belt starts. Its dues to the terrain, rainfall and soil.

The SE Asian haze is something that must be addressed, but just how the government, is going to deal with ladang farming remains to be seen. Recently in the news was an article stating that we collectively have reached thep oint where our environment on Earth is in ‘debt mode’ meaning the amount of resources we use and the amount of pollution we create, cannot be rectified by nature. Maybe Indonesia is a micro version of that, by which I mean that initially, a commnity of people in Sumatra clearing a hectare of land wouldn’t make any difference to anyone. Now the population has increased and the areas getting cleared are much larger, we’ve reached the point where their actions are affecting the whole region.