The article started off like the other two articles that we have read so far, with a brief history for an introduction. The introduction went into how the land use had changed in the last few decades of the country. It talked about the difference in the agricultural land-use of the country had changed. Some examples that it gave were how cattle were not kept in large amounts anymore, as the pastureland is being converted to cropland or planted with trees.
The author than takes us through what type of method that they are using
to get their point across to the reader. How
the article relies on historical comparisons of land-use in a single locality.
Then the author leads into where it will take the country into the
future.
One of the main points of the article is how significant the Malagasy
Highlands are to the country. It
tells us how the agricultural system is centered on intensive smallholder
production of wet rice, and a variety of dry-land crops.
This section tells us the political history of the island and how the
French controlled it in the 1800’s, and what type of controls they put on the
people. It also tells us that the
French were really just after the wood products along the shoreline.
The next part of the article tells the reader about the study site that
the author has chosen for the study. It
also gives a good example of the family life in the area, and what the family
has to endure because of the system that is set up there. The family plants a variety of crops and uses their land in
many different ways. How they’re
orange tress seem to be the only thing that they sell to the market, and
everything else is used for their own use.
The article continues on with the Twentieth Century land-use change in
Leimavo. The first trend was the
settlement of nearby uplands, and how it is relevant to the water supply of
Leimavo. The section continues with
the loss of some crops such as the rice paddies, and the cattle loss due to
cattle rustlers stealing the cattle from the rancher.
Although, with these losses they also did gain fruit tress in the
process, and they also gained market cultivation over the years.
Forests were also gained, but they did lose coffee and tobacco use
because of it though.
Overall I thought that the article was very informative in how they
explained the whole historical process of the village Leimavo.
The article was very readable and when they used the native language they
gave a good brief explanation of what it meant. With the reading being easy enough to understand you could
get a good idea of what crops were where on the island. The maps that they gave also did a good job of illustrating
where the crops were being grown.
The organization of the article was very well done, and the whole thing
just flowed from one phase to the next. You
didn’t have to turn the pages back to read a section again, just to understand
what they were talking about in the sections following it. I also thought the argument that they made was well
structured and they did a good job of getting the point across to the reader.
They backed up all their statements with good examples of what had
happened in the past and if the trend continued the results would happen like
they say they will.
Once again I thought the article was a good one, but I still think the
first article that we did on Wal-Mart and K-mart was still the best one.
Probably since that one has the biggest impact on our daily lives unlike
the last two articles.