Amazon Interactive
Making a Living
Slash and burn is an ecologicallyharmonious method of cultivation only when the populationdensity--the number of people living in an area--is low. Slash and burnrequires a lot of land, since farmers must move their crops to new fieldsevery few years.
When too many people tryto farm the land, they cannot maintain that system of crop rotation. Theyare forced to clear more and more forest for their crops. In many partsof the Amazon, the population of an area has grown so much that slash andburn--also known as milpa, swidden, and shifting cultivation--is very destructiveto the rain forest.
