The common propaganda against the Akha and other hill tribes is they do slash and burn farming. Yet no serious study is made of these events from the Activist perspective.

Long term Akha villages do not move and have stable farming arrangements with significant human investment in land improvement.

To move is to loose these investments.

The Akha do not farm more than they need to farm, nor do they farm further from the village than is practical to walk and haul farming produce.

Thus farming areas are in a circle around the village.

The Akha rotate fields, farming a couple years, then allowing them to overgrow with brush. They may however continue to farm small plots of special produce in a portion of a fallow field.

After a number of years, from 4 or longer, the Akha return to the field and "slash" it, burning it off to set the ash in the soil.

A look at stable villages shows that the Akha farm the same areas over, the forest around the village remains in tact, and life goes on.

Those opposed to "shifting agriculture" such as the Neo-Cons (New Confederates) can not explain the difference between "shifting agriculture" and "crop rotation". Basically for the reason that one is considered bad, one is considered acceptable and they are the same.

Anywhere that rice is grown, it has to be rotated, unless in terrace rice lands. Even in terrace rice lands, soil enrichment is needed.

The real issue with slash and burn farming is to generate propaganda, the greening of hate, that is racially biased against the farmers and use development policies to force them off their land and into urban poverty and the full market economy as cheap labor.

This migration is done at the hand of NGO's and international agencies. The result for the Akha is incredible suffering, a drop in food security and nutrition and the destruction of their society.

This is not a complete discussion of this subject.