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The Traditional Practice of Swidden Cultivation in the Djarai Ethnic Communities of Northeastern Cambodia

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The Traditional Practice of Swidden Cultivation in the Djarai Ethnic Communities of Northeastern Cambodia システム農学 (J. JASS), 30(4) ： 131 ～ 141, 2014 131 Contributed paper The Traditional Practice of Swidden Cultivation in the Djarai Ethnic Communities of Northeastern Cambodia Sanara HOR*, Kei MIZUNO*, Shintaro KOBAYASHI** and Tsugihiro WATANABE* * Graduate School of Global Environmental Studies, Kyoto University, Japan ** Tottori University of Environmental Studies, Japan (Received 23 April 2014; in final form 25 August 2014) Summary Djarai ethnolinguistic groups, who live in Ratanakiri Province of Cambodia, engage in the traditional practice of swidden cultivation. However, recent economic developments, such as the shifts toward large-scale plantations and cash crop production at the household level, have affected those swidden cultivators. In order to discuss the sustainability and adequacy of such new developments, it is important to clarify the traditional practice of swidden cultivation. This study examines traditional practices, farming activities, and land-use patterns related to Djarai swidden cultivation. It utilizes remote sensing and qualitative research methods and applies supervised classification and visual image analysis to ALOS AVNIR-2 and Worldview-1 data. The study also uses qualitative methods to collect and analyze in-situ information. Remote sensing and ground truthing techniques prove that Djarai swidden cultivation is interwoven with cash crop production. At the same time, qualitative methods reveal that Djarai swidden cultivation is a multiple cropping system that works in close relation with their traditional belief and land tenure practice. These traditional farming systems have been transformed due to development activities undertaken in the province, which have led Djarai villagers to change not only their farming system, but also the social system of their village. Key words: Djarai ethnic group, Land-use pattern, Northeastern Cambodia, Swidden cultivation, Traditional practice 1. Introduction that land uses and total tree covers remained stable in the period of 1953 to 1996 in many parts of Ratanakiri Many researchers have studied the traditional Province. practices of shifting cultivation and have reported Ratanakiri Province opened for development in the various problems caused by it, particularly the 1990s. Since then, swidden cultivators have been deforestation of some areas (Angelsen 1995, affected by recent economic development (Colm 1997). Goldammer 1988, Mittelman 2001). The Cambodian Large and small-scale land acquisitions have seriously northeastern province of Ratanakiri is the home of threatened indigenous livelihood (NGO Forum 2006a, ethnic minority groups that have practiced a traditional 2006b, Rosette and Michaud 2005). Recent economic farming system of shifting cultivation (Hean and Monie development has generated market pressure that 2002). Shifting cultivation, slush and burn agriculture, encouraged swidden cultivators to engage in new and and swidden cultivation are synonymous uses, but different forms of commercial agriculture, which resulted swidden cultivation describes the rice-based system in in major changes in land use (Fox 2002). Southeast Asian (Mertz et al, 2009). Fox (2002) finds The results of previous studies raise a series of questions: What is traditional swidden cultivation? In * Yoshida Hommachi, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto 606-8501, Japan practice, what kind of crop species are the swidden ** Wakabadai-kita, Tottori, 689-1111, Japan cultivators growing? What is the reality of swidden (Correspondence: [email protected]) cultivation? The goal of this study is to examine the 132 システム農学 (J. JASS), 30(4), 2014 traditional practice of swidden cultivation, farming Province had a population of 94,243, which increased to activities, and land-use patterns related to livelihood of 150,466 in 2008 (National Institute of Statistic 1998, local people who belong to the Djarai ethnolinguistic 2008). The annual growth rate was 4.6%. Ten ethnic group. minority groups comprised 62.6% of the provincial population. The province has a total area of 8,431.32 km2 2. The definition of shifting cultivation and borders the province of Mondol Kiri to the south and the province of Stung Treng to the west. Virachey Shifting cultivation has been prevalent since the National Park is located in the northern part of the Neolithic era, and it can be best understood by province. Lumphat Wildlife Sanctuary and Nsok examining its environmental, temporal, and cultural Protected Forest are located in the south. The Sesan and dimensions (Conklin 1961). The environmental Srepok Rivers cross the province flowing from western dimension refers to biotic, edaphic, and climatic Vietnam to the Sekong River, a tributary of the Mekong considerations; the temporal dimension refers to a series River. of swidden practices; and the cultural dimension includes technological, social, and ethnoecological considerations (Conklin 1961). In 1982, the Food and Agriculture Organization and the University of Ibadan defined shifting cultivation, which is also referred to as the swidden farming system, as “a system in which a short period of cultivation is followed by a long period of fallow” (Lanly 1985). Shifting cultivation was also found to be closely related to the natural vegetation-soil complex and cultivators (McGrath 1987). Furthermore, various groups have changed the meaning of shifting cultivation in order to support specific political interests (Jarosz 1993), and it is currently defined according to the characteristics of actual land-use practices (Upadhyay 1995). Therefore, the meaning of shifting cultivation conjoins environmental, chronological, cultural, political, land-use, and livelihood strategies in an area. Based on a series of questions and literature reviews presented in the previous section, we were provided a hypothesis, which mainly focuses on the origin of swidden cultivation including traditional belief and customary tenure. The hypothesis is “Djarai swidden cultivation is a multiple cropping system interweaving with traditional belief and tenure.” This study was conducted in Phi village, which is located in the Sesan commune of the Ouyadav district. 3. The study area The village is located 61 km east of Banlung, the provincial capital, and borders Vietnam. The village has 3.1 Introduction to study area a population of 632 people spread throughout 102 households (location illustrated in Fig. 1). There were Ratanakiri Province, lied about 600 km northeast of three reasons for selecting this village as the study area. Phnom Penh, is a mountainous area with elevation First, swidden cultivation fields were found around the ranging from about 70 m to 1,620 m. In 1998, Ratanakiri village, and villagers were maintaining the traditional Sanara Hor et al. ： Traditional Practice of Shifting Cultivation in Northeastern Cambodia 133 practice of swidden cultivation (see Fig. 2). Second, the villagers were maintaining the land tenure system in the Raw images DTM traditional manner. Third, external economic activities Georeference and orthorectification related to land development had been introduced by outsiders that challenged local people’s use of land Pre-classification Calibrated images resources. Designed classification scheme Supervised Classification (AVNIR-2) Classification New layer Smoothing Accuracy Final result assessment Post-classification The field survey separated into three periods. The first 㻲㼕㼓㻚㻟㻌㻵㼙㼍㼓㼑㻌㼏㼘㼍㼟㼟㼕㼒㼕㼏㼍㼠㼕㼛㼚㻌㼜㼞㼛㼏㼑㼐㼡㼞㼑 period was between February 26 2012 and March 18 2012. The first-field survey was to gather baseline First, we performed image geometric rectification, information related to swidden cultivation. The second which included georeferencing and orthorectification. period started from August 20 2012 to September 20 The study performed image direct georeference on 2012 to collect training samples and interviewed Djarai ALOS PRISM and Worldview-1 data with 10 GCPs for villagers. The third-field survey took place between 3 polynomials. Then, we georeferenced the ALOS November 15 2012 and December 25 2012 in order to AVNIR-2 data based on the rectified ALOS PRISM verify the previous information. data. We generated a DTM using raster interpolation tools before we performed the image orthorectification. 4. Research methods We created the DTM based on ASTER GDEM and topographical map data. The topographical map data 4.1 Remote sensing and the GIS approach was produced by the Cambodian Ministry of Land This study used remote sensing and GIS approaches to Management, Urban Planning, and Construction and the outline the exact amount of land use and land cover Ministry of Public Works and Transport. All raster and (LULC) by utilizing three types of satellite images: vector data used in this study was projected to the UTM ALOS AVNIR-2, ALOS PRISM, and Worldview-1’s coordination system (UTM WGS1984 zone 48N panchromatic data. Land use (LU) refers to human meters). activities undertaken in a certain land cover (LC), which Second, we developed a classification scheme before refers to the observed biophysical or physical cover on we conducted supervised classification (Anderson et al. the earth’s surface (Gregorio and Jansen, 1998). ALOS 1976) with 273 training samples, which were AVNIR-2 data were used for deriving vegetation covers. categorized into 11 classes of land use. We randomized ALOS PRISM data were used for supporting ground 102 points for accuracy assessment and 171 points for truthing. Worldview-1 data were used for understanding signature development. Every band (band 1 through
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