Agricultural Settlement and Land Use in Mountains - Mountain Geography: Physical and Human Dimensions - page 541

CHAPTER ELEVEN
Agricultural Settlement and Land Use in Mountains
STEPHEN F. CUNHA and LARRY W. PRICE
Mountains pose distinctive problems for human settlement and land use. The vast corn
and wheat fields blanketing gentler topography, such as the American Midwest and Ar-
gentine Pampas, are absent here. In their place is a more intricate pattern of crops
and animal husbandry that reflects adaptation to vertically compressed environments.
The differences are especially sharp between high and low elevation, and the windward
versus leeward mountain slopes. Moreover, farmers and herders trying to use mountain
land sustainably in this active geomorphic environment engage in a relentless struggle
against gravity. After keeping soil, water, and nutrients in position, they must contend
with market isolation and transportation difficulties. The politically marginalized ethnic
minorities that comprise many highland societies are also less likely to receive invest-
ment and subsidies from their national governments. Despite these challenges, agricul-
ture represents the most universal manipulation of mountain terrain.
Maintaining productive mountain agriculture is vitally important to people every-
where. As discussed in Chapter 10, 12 percent of the world's population lives in mountain
regions, and an additional 60 percent rely on uplands for food, water quality, timber,
minerals, and recreation. Utilizing these resources influences environmental conditions
for the entire watershed. The highland-lowland economic and ecologic linkages are ever
more critical as world population continues to grow, passing 7 billion in 2011.
Agriculture at any elevation transforms the natural landscape into a cultural one in
which human labor and technology manipulate plant, animal, and soil relationships to
produce maximum yield from agro-ecosystems (Fig. 11.1). As with any intensely manipu-
lated environmental system, the most formidable task facing highland farmers is increas-
ing output to support expanding populations while at the same time ensuring long-term
productivity and stability similar to natural ecosystems. This requires protecting the soil,
water, and biotic resources that sustain their lifeways. For the purpose of this chapter,
mountain agriculture includes four broadly defined types of land use: sedentary agricul-
ture, pastoralism (livestock raising), mixed agriculture (farming and livestock), and sub-
sistence agroforestry. The emphasis is on the developing or traditional/indigenous world
where fossil fuels, chemical fertilizers, mechanization, and other external contributions
are rare or absent. These enterprises are usually small in scale (less than 10 hectares, or
25 acres), and exist on family and community labor. Throughout much of the mountain
world, they “constitute a major occupation and a source of sustenance for the bulk of the
mountain communities, but also represent a primary form of natural resource use in the
mountain areas of developing countries” (Jodha 1997: 314). Deciding which highland ag-