Bush fallowing ensures that A.only one crop is cultivated . B.artificial fertilizer is used. C.the land regains it's fertility naturally D.more labour is employed
Answers
Answer: Cultivating trees and agricultural crops in intimate combination with one
another is an ancient practice that farmers have used throughout the world.
Tracingthehistoryofagroforestry,King (1987)statesthatinEurope,untilthe
Middle Ages, it was the general custom to clear-fell degraded forest, burn the
slash, cultivate food crops for varying periods on the cleared area, and plant or
sow trees before, along with, or after sowing agricultural crops. This "farming
system"isnolongerpopularinEurope,butwaswidelypracticedinFinlandup
totheendofthelastcentury,andwasbeingpracticedinafewareasinGermany as late
as the1920s.
In tropical America many societies have simulated forest conditions to
obtain the beneficial effects of the forest ecosystem. For example, in Central
America, it has been a traditional practice for a long time for farmers to plant
an average of two dozen species of plants on plots no larger than one-tenth of
a hectare. A farmer would plant coconut or papaya with a lower layer of
bananas or citrus, a shrub layer of coffee or cacao, annuals of different stature
such as maize, and finally a spreading ground cover such as squash. Such an
intimate mixture of various plants, each with a different structure, imitated the
layered configuration of mixed tropical forests (Wilken, 1977).
In Asia, the Hanunoo of the Philippines practiced a complex
and somewhat sophisticated type of "shifting" cultivation. In clearing the
forest for agricultural use, they deliberately spared certain trees which, by the
end of the rice-growing season, provided a partial canopy of new foliage to
prevent excessive exposure of the soil to the sun. Trees were an indispensable
part of the Hanunoo farming system and were either planted or preserved from
the original forest to provide food, medicines, construction wood, and
cosmetics (Conklin, 1957). Similar farming systems have also been common in
many other parts of the humid lowland tropics of Asia.
The situation was little different in Africa. In southern Nigeria, yams,
maize, pumpkins, and beans were typically grown together under a cover of
scattered trees (Forde, 1937). The Yoruba of western Nigeria, who have long
practiced an intensive system of mixing herbaceous, shrub, and tree crops,
claimthatthe systemisameans ofconservinghumanenergybymaking fulluse