Discussion
Jhum cultivation, a form of shifting agriculture, is practised mainly in which part of India?
Answer: A
Correct answer: The northeastern states
Jhum is shifting cultivation, practised chiefly in the hill areas of the northeastern states - Nagaland, Mizoram, Meghalaya, Manipur, Tripura, Assam and Arunachal Pradesh. A patch of forest is cleared and burnt, the ash fertilising the soil; it is cropped for two or three years until yields fall, then abandoned and left fallow while the cultivators move on. It is also called slash-and-burn agriculture, and the same practice has local names elsewhere - podu in Odisha and Andhra Pradesh, bewar in Madhya Pradesh, kumari in the Western Ghats. It was sustainable while the fallow period ran to fifteen or twenty years and the population was small. Shortening cycles have made it a cause of deforestation, soil erosion and declining fertility, and governments have long tried to replace it with terraced or settled farming - with limited success, since it is bound up with land tenure and community practice as much as with agronomy.
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