Zabo farming: a traditional wisdom of tribal farmers for natural resource management in Phek district of Nagaland

Abstract

Nagaland is one of the Northeastern States of India inhabited by sixteen major tribes and numerous minor tribes. The Naga Villages and districts are delineated by clan and tribes, respectively. Nagaland is known as land of festivals and the festivals coincide with the agricultural activities, such as crop sowing or harvesting season. Around 71% population of the people lives in villages and primarily dependant on agriculture and allied sector. Each tribe has its own distinct way of doing agriculture farming. The plain land is only 30% of total land and rest is hill area. In plain region, pani kheti or lowland rice cultivation is the predominant farming whereas in hill region, tribal farmers practices jhum or slash and burn farming. Jhum cultivation is done in around one lakh ha in Nagaland. Jhum is an indigenous system of organic multiple cropping well suited to the heavy rainfall areas of hill track. The tribal communities in the region have developed and adopted indigenous land and water management system which are eco-friendly and based on conservation and sustainable utilization of available natural resources. In jhum, there are several variant like alder based farming, oak based farming, maize-kholar based farming, terraced rice cultivation, rice-fish farming etc. One of such system is Zabo farming, which the paper discussed traditional wisdom of tribal farmers in Phek district of Nagaland.