Myanmar as a country in tropical Asia has communities depending upon shifting cultivation for their lively hoods. These communities exist mainly in mountainous areas of Kachin State, Northern and Eastern Shan Sate and Chin State.
The area of shifting cultivation for the year 2001-2002 in those area was estimated about 300,000 acres. Other terms used for shifting cultivation are slash and burn agriculture and ‘Taungya" system in Myanmar language.
Shifting cultivation leads to deforestations and the living standard of the shifting cultivators is lower than communities mainly because of their shifting dwellings that cannot be possible for area development activities.
U Tun Tin
(Director, Agriculture & Mechanization Department, Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation )
The communities depending upon shifting cultivation in the above mention area and the amount of shifting cultivation areas are 89,792 acres in Northern Shan State, 83,800 acres in Chin State, and 50,224 acres in Eastern Shan State and 38,970 acres in Kachin State, altogether 262,786 acres.
Now, the government is planning to reclaim upland arable land for shifting cultivation as a national project. Three project management offices to establish in Chin, Northern and Eastern Shan States. The Committee for Reclamation and Cultivation in the Uplands, headed by Minister for Agriculture and Irrigation was also formed and according to the arrangement of this committee, a pilot project for upland arable land reclamation was implemented by Agricultural Mechanization Department Starting from the 27th of May 2002 in Chin State.
Pilot project area was chosen in Laiba reservoir irrigation track where water supply is available for the whole year round and the local people can grow serial for the best crop followed by other cash crops and they raised their income and the standard of living as well.
The International Concordia Co., Ltd. rendered services for surveying designing of terrace by using Topcon Electronic Total Station, silver card, soft wares and mobile GBS station.
Members of the pilot project implementation team for upland reclamation met with local authorities, shifting cultivators and disseminate the environmental problems of shifting cultivation and the alternatives for replacing it.
Together, they conducted surveying, designing and reclamation enthusiastically and exquisitely to remove shifting cultivation in their areas forever. Upland reclamation project as it is fully connected to border area development and eradication of poppy plantation would be implemented with five-year plan. And the terrace constructed by the Upland/Arable Land Reclamation Project would become the sample of the stairways to the national unity.