Shifting Cultivation

Clearing a plot, often by fire, cropping it for a few seasons, then abandoning it to fallow forest regrowth for years before returning; known regionally as swidden farming, jhum or slash-and-burn. Given a long enough fallow, the resting years rebuild the soil's fertility and the returning forest checks erosion, which is why the system persisted sustainably for millennia in many places. Shortening the fallow under population pressure is what turns the same practice into the deforestation and irreversible soil exhaustion, sometimes within a decade, it is now most associated with in the public mind.