Agricultural Settlement and Land Use in Mountains - Mountain Geography: Physical and Human Dimensions - page 585

in coastal mountains of India and Myanmar. The Central American cordillera and north-
ern Andes are famous for bananas. Improved container shipping and genetic alterations
tailored for specific markets bring formerly distant mountain farmers into the global
economy.
Agroforestry Management in the Future
Agroforestry strives to increase timber and fuelwood production, while reducing declin-
ing soil fertility and erosion (Blatner et al. 2000). The uneven adoption of this manage-
ment paradigm in subsistence mountain societies is generating much concern in inter-
national government and NGO circles. Some early programs designed to promote agro-
forestry fell short of their goals in part because well-intentioned outside support was
compromised by inaccurate assumptions regarding the traditional, and therefore ineffi-
cient, mountain subsistence strategies (Donald 2004). Compared with cultivated ground
crops and livestock grazing, the utilization of highland forests is more worrisome to low-
land populations. In 1976, Eckholm (1976: 78) noted that “topsoil washing down into
India and Bangladesh is now Nepal's most precious export, but one for which it receives
no compensation.” This opinion stoked the theory of environmental Himalayan degrada-
tion, according to which the agricultural, grazing, and forestry practices of allegedly ig-
norant Nepali hill farmers were to blame for periodic devastating floods in downstream
India and Bangladesh. While a thorough analysis did hold some people in highland areas
accountable for indiscriminate logging, overgrazing, and poor farming techniques, the
claims of an imminent environmental supercrisis were both exaggerated and based on
inaccurate and/or incomplete data. For example, evidence from the Likhu Khola drain-
age basin in the Middle Hills of Nepal proved that rates of soil erosion were less than
commonly alleged. The investigators urged reconsidering “the common perceptions in
an environment where farmers, for the most part, exercise great care and judgment in
managing their limited land resources” (Gardner and Gerrard 2003: 43). Moreover, gov-
ernment and international efforts to improve the lot of highland farmers and mitigate
lower watershed catastrophe too often failed to seek local input. Worse still, their solu-
tions did not necessarily serve local socioeconomic needs. This debate now frames the
character of international aid and scholarship. For the history and analysis of the Him-
alayan degradation debate, consult Thompson et al. (1986), Ives and Messerli (1989),
Forsyth (1996), Gerrard and Gardner (2002), Gardner and Gerrard (2002, 2003), Byers
(2005), Ives (2006), and Hofer and Messerli (2006).