Agricultural Settlement and Land Use in Mountains - Mountain Geography: Physical and Human Dimensions - page 545

ous schemes to increase nonfarm income combined to improve local people's liveli-
hoods, enhanced by the fact that these highlanders took full advantage of well-estab-
lished links to lowland markets.
Present-day modernization and improved production usually result from one or more
of the following quantifiable influences that are either internal (from within the com-
munity and/or local environment) or external (from outside the community and/or local
environment). The first is new road construction that brings previously isolated villages
into the commercial fold. Reliable transportation induces farmers to abandon tradition-
al subsistence crops for more lucrative cash monocrops that are trucked from small set-
tlements to large lowland markets such as Bangkok (Thailand), Fez (Morocco), or Lima
(Peru), or, where they exist, highland urban centers such as Quito (Ecuador), La Paz
(Bolivia), or Maseru (Lesotho). This more intensive land use usually supports relatively
larger populations. Farmers typically build permanent homes in compact agglomera-
tions and go out from the village to work the fields. This arrangement increases pro-
tection from potential competitors, preserves the best land for cultivation, and facilit-
ates communal activities. The Hunza region of northern Pakistan is an example of this
transition. In 1978, the newly opened Karakoram Highway connected this secluded dis-
trict to lowland cities (Kreutzmann 2004; Fig. 11.3). As the secondary and largely un-
paved road network expands into the lateral valleys, the traditional subsistence collage
of corn, wheat, barley, and vegetables gives way to cash monocrops such as potatoes,
spices, opium, and coca. Better transport also ignited a tourist boom that generates
service sector jobs (e.g., rooms, meals, crafts, transport, and guide services). The com-
bined proceeds from cash crops and tourism allow farmers to purchase foodstuffs they
no longer grow. This transition often increases household income to the point where, in
regions such as Morocco's Atlas Mountains, tourism and crops compete for economic
supremacy (Parish and Funnell 1996). In another example, new roads either introduced
or improved better drinking water, electricity, telecommunications, and financial insti-
tutions in the Almora District of the Indian central Himalaya. In fact, a road network
became “the most felt need for socioeconomic development in remote and inaccess-
ible mountain areas that are cut off from mainstream development” (Rawat and Sharma
1997: 117). The implications of increased access are discussed further in Chapter 12.