Agricultural Settlement and Land Use in Mountains - Mountain Geography: Physical and Human Dimensions - page 544

FIGURE 11.2 Von Humboldt's Andean vegetation zones.
Generalists and Specialists
Mountain agriculturalists are either generalists or specialists. The generalists divide
their effort into cultivation, tending livestock, and exploiting at least one other primary
resource (usually forests). Specialists focus on either cultivation or animal husbandry,
and are more reliant upon established trade links to procure the goods they do not
produce. The size and scale of each region also influences the agricultural strategy. In
smaller mountain ranges, like the Drakensberg (Southern Africa) or Pyrenees (Southern
Europe), generalists may farm and graze every altitudinal zone during the course of a
single year. On the other hand, in larger mountains such as the Himalaya-Karakoram
and Andes, specialization is common, because the great distance between zones re-
duces the habitat variety available to any individual group.
Modernization
With few exceptions, mountain agriculture is undergoing rapid change. Academic, ap-
plied, NGO, and government specialists vigorously debate the external and internal
forces driving this transformation. Distilling their theoretical and interpretive under-
pinnings would occupy a chapter in itself; readers should consult Jodha (1997),
Kreutzmann (2000), Ives (2006), Hofer and Messerli (2006), and Aase et al. (2013) for
more depth. Agrarian change seldom results from any single factor. As Ponte (2001)
found in Tanzania's Uluguru Mountains, expanded cultivation on surrounding plains,
migrant labor remittances, experimentation with alternative farming systems, and vari-