Tropical Subsistence Agriculture in Latin 

 America: Some Neglected Aspects and 

 Implications 



By Raymond E. Crist ^ 



Research Professor of Geography 

 University of Florida 



[With 8 plates] 



Much has been written about the adverse physical factors in the 

 less-developed lands of the tropics: The hot, steaming, depressing 

 climate; tlie "tropical" diseases; the infertile, leached-out soils; the 

 impenetrable forests with their "varmints" and venomous snakes — to 

 mention but the most formidable in the whole capacious grabbag of 

 horror factors, real or imagined, that are widely reported to cut pro- 

 ductive capacity and potential to zero, or veiy near it. But less 

 paper and ink and cerebration have been devoted to some of the more 

 subtle, but perhaps more significant, or even sinister, cultural brakes, 

 or roadblocks, operative for man in the tropics. 



TROPICAL SUBSISTENCE AGRICULTURE, A WAY OF LIFE FOR MILLIONS 



It is estimated that some 200 millions of people in the tropical areas 

 of Latin America, Africa, and Asia — even in areas usually thought of 

 as densely populated, such as the Indian subcontinent — make their liv- 

 ing by practicing some form of "shifting agriculture," "slash-and- 

 bum farming," "forest fallow," "nomadic agriculture," or whatever 

 i\\% local name for it. Thus perhaps 1 person out of eveiy 12 or 15 

 in the world, a population roughly equal to the population of the 

 United States, is engaged in this hand-to-mouth agriculture. 



This remarkable system of agriculture, developed on a trial-and- 

 error basis millennia before the principles of modern science were 

 dreamed of, consists of clearing land of tropical forest or bush, except 

 for huge trees which are left standing but killed by girdling; burning 

 the trash when dry ; and planting to crops for from 1 to 5 years. As 



1 The author has over the years carried out field investigations in Latin America under 

 a continuing grant of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. 



503 



