Making a Living Indigenous peoples have lived in the Amazon for
thousands of years. For most of that time, they hunted, fished,
and grew a variety of crops in small gardens. Their lifestyle
was called subsistence, because they hunted and grew only what
they needed to subsist, or survive. They practiced a kind of
agriculture called slash and burn. Slash and burn sounds
terribly hard on the environment, but--if done properly--it is
one of the most ecologically harmonious methods of cultivation.
Farmers clear the land by slashing the trees and bushes, then
burning them to release nutrients into the soil. They grow crops
in the new field for a few years, then clear another plot of
land to plant. Later, they will return and clear an old field,
now covered with the young trees of a secondary forest. In the
Ecuadorian Amazon, indigenous Quichua people often rotate their
crops every year. That way their crops always have rich soil.
Also, after a year in cultivation, a field becomes overgrown
with weeds. Watch the ani