Centre for Economic and Social Studies, Working Paper No. 81, January, Hyderabad K. Anil Kumar (2010)

A field survey in tribal village in India locates the linkages between indigenous knowledge and sustainable agriculture and underscores the importance of preserving local knowledge in agriculture in the interests of maintaining bio-diversity and food security.

The role of indigenous knowledge in practicing sustainable agriculture has gained significance in recent decades. This is so especially in the wake of hardening of resource and ecological constraints, owing to sustained use of productivity-enhancing cultivation techniques. The latter involves intensive use of chemical inputs and water. The discourse on Traditional/Indigenous Knowledge (IK) has considerably developed in recent times, laying out its various definitions and dimensions. While no one definition of IK exists in the literature, in the domain of agriculture, IK represents the informal knowledge of local communities on cultivation techniques, largely preserved over historical time points through oral and cultural traditions.

Unlike modern, scientific knowledge, IK does not separate the ‘secular’ or ‘rational’ knowledge from intuitions, common wisdom and spiritual practices. Rather, IK can be defined as the systemic body of knowledge acquired by local communities through accumulated experience and intimate understanding of the geography and culture of a particular environment. It essentially evolved through ‘unintended experimentation’, fortuitous mistakes and natural selection undertaken by farmers in their efforts to survive within fragile ecosystems. A broader concept of IK also includes the knowledge generated among farmers due to their engagement with modern, productivity-enhancing technologies.

Kumar conducts a field study, with an ethnographic approach, among the Pradhan tribe households in the village called Jamni in Adilabad district, Andhra Pradesh, India. The primary field work is based on a schedule of questions (featuring household details, cultural and agricultural practices) and group discussions. The field study helps in tracing and locating the different facets of traditional farming knowledge that this tribe has acquired. This also reveals how dynamic changes have occurred with regard to their application of IK in agriculture over time.

The traditional farming practices of the tribe have been intricately dominated by IK.

The paper extensively documents the cultural and religious rituals, particularly at the time of sowing of Jowar (sorghum), the major food crop grown by the community. The pre-sowing ritual called Iddri involves the offering of seed-grains on behalf of the community to the local deity and a subsequent equal distribution of the offered seed-grains, considered sacred, to every community member. This ritual has historically played an important role in seed selection by farmers.

Traditionally, the farmers maintained their crop varieties by keeping household seed-stocks through inter-generational transfers, from which contributions are made to the sacred, communal offering. The distribution of the offered seeds then assists in seed selection through intra-community exchanges, and sometimes also across communities. However, in recent times with farmers mostly buying seeds from the markets each year, some of these customary networks have been disrupted or dissolved.

Consequently, there has also been an increasing use of fertilizers and pesticides with time. With changing cropping pattern and dependence on markets for seeds, the pest-resistant varieties of Jowar and Red Gram, which used to be prevalent earlier through the natural self-selection process, has been lost. Jowar, which was inter-cropped with red gram on 40 percent of the cultivable land in the village, fifty years back, is cultivated now only in 10 percent of the area. Cotton is presently grown on 50 percent of the total cropped area with red gram as intercrop. Earlier, cotton was sown for the little cash required on one-fourth of the area. Traditionally, for a long time, farmers never sprayed pesticides on food crops like Jowar or Red Gram. This situation changed in 1995 when Lepidopteran pests extensively emerged and damaged Red Gram crops. Although farmers are still inclined not to use pesticides on the food crops, they can barely avoid it now.

Also, the expected higher income, the reason why farmers shifted to cotton cultivation, was not unambiguously realized. While the cotton yield improved with modern methods of cultivation (5 quintals per acre from the Mahyco-1 seed variety as opposed to the earlier 1.5-2 quintals per acre), the costs of cultivation and scale of investments also expanded simultaneously. The larger amount of fertilizers and higher number of sprayings required in input-intensive cotton cultivation caused pressure on the income margins. The attacks of the bollworm were frequently reported from cotton fields, necessitating increasing use of pesticides like monocrotophos and quinalphos (3 sprays at the minimum). Fluctuations in cotton yields and prices in odd years caused farmer households to slip into debt-traps very easily with this higher cost structure of cultivation.

In this context, the ‘kitchen gardens’ maintained by farmers to grow vegetables in their homes is a useful innovation that helps in sustaining food security. The food security situation has become vulnerable to some extent with Jowar being replaced by cotton and the latter not yielding the promised high income consistently.

Vegetables are cultivated in ‘kitchen gardens’ largely for subsistence. The mode of cultivation is suitably conservationist in terms of water and input-use. While waste drainage water from the kitchen is used to start seedlings, ashes and sweepings from the household and domestic animals’ manure are normally spread in the garden. This creates fertile conditions for growing vegetables like Chilli, Tomato, Cucumber, Papaya, Lemon and different varieties of Gourds. The ‘kitchen garden’ has emerged as an important component of production and a critical source of nutrition for the Pradhan farm households.

Based on the findings, the author concludes that modern methods of cultivation, while increasing yields, have also depleted the farmers’ indigenous knowledge regarding seed varieties by disrupting seed-selection and exchange networks. An important fallout of this has been the loss of pest-resistant crop varieties, particularly for food crops, thereby escalating the use of pesticides. The ‘kitchen garden’ based on indigenous and conservationist cultivation methods are identified as a crucial and successful component of farm production by the Pradhan tribe.

The author strongly recommends public and government initiatives and support for preservation of critical IK in farming in the interests of maintaining biodiversity and food security. While a farm economics analysis of different modes of cultivation would have further thrown light on precise dimensions of required financial support for this purpose, the study nonetheless makes a convincing case for preserving local knowledge.