The Peruvian government seeks to stop deforestation in its primary forest in the Amazon. It alleges that the main culprit of deforestation is smallholders who practice swidden farming. However, this is a simplified view, concealing the main reasons for deforestation and the complexity of land use changes. By studying land and forest use through the lens of the indigenous Kechwa-Lamas people, who live along forest covered mountain slopes in the region San Martín, we attempt to show the complex and intertwined reasons for deforestation, as well as how the indigenous people try to cope with this development. We identify and discuss three “ideal” types of land use—the swidden and tree based systems of the Kechwa-Lamas people, agricultural intensification practices (particularly perennial cash crops), and state conservation approaches. In practice these uses overlap spatially and have synergistic and antagonistic aspects. Kechwa-Lamas may clear land for tree cash crops, but they also manage forests and seek to conserve them for particular needs. Migrants from the Andes clear forests to plant perennial crops, penetrating the ancestral territories of the Kechwa-Lamas, while large scale capital intensive agriculture often intrudes into primary forest and jeopardizes existing subsistence systems. The opening up of forest areas in San Martín and its gradual integration into the nation’s market economy, together with the local government’s division of the region into zones intended for different purposes, have had both intended and unintended consequences. There is a need to develop a more nuanced understanding of the forms and complexity of forests and their transitions, particularly where secondary and managed forests replace previous rainforest areas. The findings draw on field observations and interviews with households, key NGO informants and a detailed case study of 13 Kechwa-Lamas villages.

Agriculture is currently dominated by annual crops. A shift from annual to perennial cereals has been suggested as a way to improve the sustainability of agriculture. Such a shift may have impacts at multiple levels, from the field, to the farm, and the landscape. With a focus on Swedish farm production systems, farmers’ views on the potential risks and possibilities of cultivating perennial cereals are discussed in light of the available knowledge regarding plant traits and ecological implications of perennial systems. Farmer interviews showed that potential changes in agricultural sustainability, if perennial cereals were to be introduced, are highly complex, and context specific. Perennial cereals could be part of a transition toward a more sustainable agriculture depending on how they are used in the local farming system and in the larger landscape. Efforts to increase the use of perennial crops require linking specific plant traits of the perennial crop to the properties of the farming systems where these crops would be employed.

In this paper we use a patches approach to study changes in local land-use practices in response to constraints of labour and the increasing effects of climate change. Drawing on a mix of different participatory exercises and in-depth interviews we describe five categories of land use patches in two contrasting study areas in Nepal. We examine how decreasing access to land, labour and water generate socially differentiated local landscapes. Our findings point toward adaptive land-use responses that secure a subsistence production, encourage close integration between crop and tree land practices, but are supported by a remittance economy. This logic of local land use is not recognised by either agricultural or forestry institutions. We argue that an ongoing debate on land abandonment in Nepal is an example of how narrow sectoral understandings fail to comprehend adaptation practices in a complex landscape system.