Upland agriculture in Asia

In Southeast Asia there are many serious problems of agricultural sustainability observe in all the major ago-ecosystems. But the sloping uplands are geographically the most extensive of ecosystems, and the the most threatened. The unsustainability of land use systems in the uplands is associated with increasing populations of subsistence farm families cultivating infertile sloping soils, accelerating land degradation and soil erosion; the impending loss of most tropical hardwood forest, and the failure of reforestation. Inequitable and insecure access to land resources exacerbates the tendency toward inappropriate land use. Moe productive and sustainable land use systems must be intractable unless systematically and innovatively addressed. The problem of upland resource base deterioration extend across all national frontiers in the region, but they are only now beginning to be grappled with by the respective governments. Within each country the domain of the uplands is usually a complex division of responsibilities among the forestry and the agriculture departments. This is greatly complicates technology generation, land tenure, and the delivery of infrastructure and service in these ecosystems.

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