Agricultural Settlement and Land Use in Mountains - Mountain Geography: Physical and Human Dimensions - page 560

erosion, gangs, warlords, and government-sponsored eradication efforts with collateral
damage to food crops (see Chapter 12).
In many tropical locations, traditional agriculture is evolving into a cash enterprise,
including family farms that specialize in one or two crops and plantation farms that
produce one main monocrop aided by inexpensive and often migratory labor. Such en-
deavors firmly trade subsistence strategy and social structure for the trappings of ag-
ribusiness: Chemical fertilizers replace manure, tractors supplant the animal-drawn
plow, and seed is often purchased instead of culled from the prior years' effort. Farmers
ship the harvest from seaports, road, or rail hubs to the global market. Many are pro-
cessed into commodities highly desired in the lowlands, such as coffee from the high-
lands of Latin America and Vietnam, tea from the interior ranges of Malaysia and My-
anmar, sugar cane from the Caribbean archipelago, and tobacco from the highlands of
Papua New Guinea and East Africa.
Mountain Pastoralism
Pastoralists rely on animals for their principal means of support. Often, they do not sow
any crops but, instead, gather wild plants or obtain what they need at periodic markets.
Livestock grazing is most common in the middle and higher latitudes, where agricul-
ture is more difficult because of shorter growing seasons and variable precipitation. The
pastures are above the cultivated fields, where snow precludes farming and grazing for
much of the year. Some foraging occurs year round in tropical mountains, except on
the highest peaks where perennial snow and ice limit the terrain. Thus, pastoralism is a
common strategy to utilize mountain areas that otherwise go uncultivated, if not unused
altogether. Animal husbandry is vital to the success of highland societies. Livestock con-
vert grass and sedge biomass that is not directly useful to humans into food products
and cooking fuel. The animals are further exploited for labor, transport, textiles, hides,
and the distribution of wealth.
The three general approaches to grazing stock in mountains are (1) nomadic pastor-
alism, (2) transhumance, and (3) mixed grazing with farming. All are found primarily
in middle and high latitudes and represent cultural adaptation to the annual cycle of
seasonal change in mountain and lowland grasslands. The first strategy, nomadic pas-
toralism, is a highly fluid lifeway in which small bands of people and their animals mi-
grate between winter and summer pastures with no permanent settlement base (Fig.
11.12). This is common in Tibet and the high Mongolian steppe. A second strategy,
transhumance, also requires migration between winter and summer pastures. However,
most of the community remains in permanent settlements to raise crops and graze an-
imals locally, while shepherds or a few families accompany other animals to distant high
pastures. This occurs in midlatitude mountains the world over, and can be readily ob-
served in ranges including the Alps, Andes, Carpathians, Himalaya, High Atlas, Pamir,
and Rocky Mountains (Fig. 11.13). The third approach combines both grazing and farm-
ing, and is similar to transhumance but is more localized, as vertical migrations of live-
stock occur within the same valley or mountain slope. The subtle but important differ-
ence here is that animals are an adjunct to cultivation, as both herds and tenders return
to the primary settlement each evening. This approach is covered in a separate section
below.