Description
| - Slash and burn consists of cutting and burning of forests or woodlands to create fields for agriculture or pasture for livestock, or for a variety of other purposes. It is sometimes part of shifting cultivation agriculture, and of transhumance livestock herding.
Historically, the practice of slash and burn has been widely practised throughout most of the world, in grasslands as well as woodlands, and known by many names. In temperate regions, such as Europe and North America, the practice has been mostly abandoned over the past few centuries. Today the term is mainly associated with tropical rain forests. Slash and burn techniques are used by between 200 and 500 million people worldwide.
Older English terms for slash and burn include assarting, swidden, and fire-fallow cultivation.
Slash and burn is a specific functional element of certain farming practices, often shifting cultivation systems. In some cases such as parts of Madagascar, slash and burn may have no cyclical aspects (e.g....
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