Forest preference in swidden agriculture: Traditional knowledge and utilization of biotic diversity

This paper addresses the question of a preference for primary vs. secondary forest among swidden agriculturalists, using data gathered among the tribal Kantu' of West Kalimantan, Indonesia. The Kantu' have traditionally made a distinction between the two types of forest, based on the differing inputs, outputs and chronologies of swiddens that are cut from them. Historically this distinction was important to the Kantu' because farming of primary forest bore decisive economic and military advantages within the then context of chronic intertribal warfare. This distinction has maintained its importance into the postwar, contemporary era, although for different reasons. Today the average Kantu' household farms both primary and secondary forest, in part because the former has jural advantages whereas the latter has economic advantages, but largely so as to exploit the differences between the two. This is a major element in a strategy designed first, to minimize risk and stablize the return on labor, and second, to intensify utilization of this labor.