Why did the Britishers not prefer shifting cultivators?

The British disliked shifting cultivators for the following reasons:

• Movement of cultivators shifting from one place to another would make revenue tracking a hard task

• Timber, a valuable component of the railways, would be lost due to shifting cultivation practices

• Forest fires could break out as one of the practices of shifting cultivation waste to burn out cut down tree stumps.

Shifting cultivation is an agricultural practice in which a piece of land is farmed on, only to be abandoned later after an initial use.

For more relevant articles refer to the links given below:

• UPSC Environment and Ecology Questions
• Conservation of Biodiversity
• UPSC Environment and Ecology