• I: Introduction; 1: Environmental Ethnoscience: Land Use, Soils and Society; 2: Rotating Land not Crops: Shifting Cultivation and Sweet Potato; II: The Climate Factor; 3: Ethnometeorology: The Climate; 4: Coping with Climatic Variations: The Spectre of Famine; III: The Land Resources Factor; 5: Ethnogeoscience: Topography and Geology; 6: Living with Land Loss: The Costs of Erosion; IV: The Biotic Factors; 7: Ethnobotany: Plants and Vegetation Communities; 8: Contending with Forest and Fallow: Demons to Regrowth; 9: Into the Soil: Nutrient Cycling and Decomposition; V: The Soil; 10: Ethnopedology: The Soils; 11: Keeping Up with Soil Status: The Implications of Variability; 12: Out of the Soil: Fertility Under Cultivation; VI: Conclusion; 13: Mounds of Soil: Grounds for Sound Land Resource Management; 14: Racing with Time: Degradation or Conservation?

'Probably the most comprehensive, ethnographically rich environmental anthropology book ever written. It has the scope of classic works by Malinowski, with a much greater knowledge of ecology. I do not recall being as impressed by the ethnographic depth and the sophistication of environmental expertise in decades.' - Emilio Moran, Indiana University in American Anthropologist