"...This chapter has several related objectives. In the first section, I provide some indication of Batak rice yields and subsistence strategies before the arrival of large numbers of migrants about forty-five years ago. These data are based on verbal accounts that I have recorded from Batak elders. The 1960s were the prelude to a new era of cultural transformations, which continued through the 1970s and led to major farming crises and the loss of both land and landraces. I begin by analysing chronologically a number of events that occurred between 1980 and 2005, and which have led to the collapse of a relatively stable society of foragers and farmers. The changing relations between forest availability, swidden size and fal­ low periods and the reasons why yields declined per unit of land and labour cannot be understood without seeing the larger picture and assess­ ing the different factors, both external and internal, that have contributed to the transformation of the Batak swidden system into a costly, often unproductive and increasingly ?risky? enterprise. In the final section I examine how national and local politics have had (and continue to have) a crucial bearing on everything happening in and around Batak swid- dens. As I shall attempt to demonstrate, the ?cycle of nature? (the seasonal changes taking place in the environment and people?s cultural means of coping with them) impinges on and is often inseparable from the ?cycle of politics? (the recurrent ways in which the state manifests itself through its laws and programmes)..."