Laggards or Leaders: Conservers of Traditional Agricultural Knowledge in Bolivia†

Many sustainable agricultural practices are based on local and traditional farming knowledge. This article examines the conservation and loss of three traditional practices in the Bolivian Altiplano that agronomic research has shown increase the resiliency of small farmers in the face of climate-related risks. These practices are the use of manure, the use of local forecasts and risk-management strategies, and the preservation of crop biodiversity. Although these practices are widely used today, farmers have been steadily abandoning them during the past decade. This article examines the characteristics of those who maintain and those who abandon traditional practices to see if the abandonment of local knowledge can be explained by the adoption-diffusion literature. This research does not support the adoption-diffusion literature; although the factors related to conservation are slightly different for each practice, the findings do not support the idea that young, educated, and wealthier farmers are more likely to reject local knowledge. Instead, off-farm activities such as migration, employment, and trade seem to be related to the decline in local practices as each affects the availability of labor and the availability of people to learn these practices.

[1]  J. A. Calvin.  Regression Models for Categorical and Limited Dependent Variables , 1998 .

[2]  C. Valdivia,et al.  Adapting to Climate Change in Andean Ecosystems: Landscapes, Capitals, and Perceptions Shaping Rural Livelihood Strategies and Linking Knowledge Systems , 2010 .

[3]  M. Bellon.  Conceptualizing Interventions to Support On-Farm Genetic Resource Conservation , 2004 .

[4]  The Potatoes of Bolivia: Their Breeding Value and Evolutionary Relationships , 1989 .

[5]  C. Valdivia,et al.  Local Forecast Communication In The Altiplano , 2009 .

[6]  E. Rogers,et al.  Diffusion of innovations , 1964, Encyclopedia of Sport Management.

[7]  P. Sillitoe.  The Development of Indigenous Knowledge , 1998, Current Anthropology.

[8]  Douglas H. Constance.  2008 AFHVS presidential address , 2009 .

[9]  D. Warren.  Using Indigenous Knowledge in Agricultural Development , 1991 .

[10]  D. Raes,et al.  Agroclimatic constraints for rainfed agriculture in the Bolivian Altiplano , 2007 .

[11]  C. Valdivia.  Andean Livelihood Strategies and the Livestock Portfolio , 2004 .

[12]  C. S. Holling,et al.  Resilience and Sustainable Development: Building Adaptive Capacity in a World of Transformations , 2002, Ambio.

[13]  C. Tebaldi,et al.  Prioritizing Climate Change Adaptation Needs for Food Security in 2030 , 2008, Science.

[14]  G. Shively.  Consumption risk, farm characteristics, and soil conservation adoption among low-income farmers in the Philippines , 1997 .

[15]  Sue B. Silver,et al.  Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment , 2006 .

[16]  Y. Hayami.  Induced Innovation, Green Revolution, and Income Distribution: Comment , 1981, Economic Development and Cultural Change.

[17]  Patterns of technology adoption and perceptions of virtual laboratories among undergraduate engineering students , 2009 .

[18]  M. Cane,et al.  Ethnoclimatology in the Andes A cross-disciplinary study uncovers a scientific basis for the scheme Andean potato farmers traditionally use to predict the coming rains , 2022 .

[19]  A. Pacey,et al.  Farmer first: Farmer innovation and agricultural research , 1989 .

[20]  E. Fernandes,et al.  Management control of soil organic matter dynamics in tropical land-use systems , 1997 .

[21]  Z. Griliches.  HYBRID CORN: AN EXPLORATION IN THE ECONOMIC OF TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE , 1957 .

[22]  M. Altieri.  Linking ecologists and traditional farmers in the search for sustainable agriculture , 2004 .

[23]  Barbara Wejnert.  Integrating models of diffusion of innovations: a Conceptual Framework. , 2002 .

[24]  J. Bauder,et al.  Adoption of Sustainable Agricultural Practices: Diffusion, Farm Structure, and Profitability1 , 2010 .

[25]  Z. Griliches.  Hybrid Corn and the Economics of Innovation. , 1960, Science.

[26]  M. Marzano,et al.  Future of indigenous knowledge research in development , 2009 .

[27]  Harriet Menter,et al.  Mainstreaming gender-sensitive participatory approaches: The CIAT case study , 2004 .

[28]  J. Taylor,et al.  Technology adoption and biological diversity in Andean potato agriculture , 1992 .

[29]  K. Moore.  Network Framing of Pest Management Knowledge and Practice , 2008 .

[30]  Guiling Wang,et al.  Mechanisms of summertime precipitation variability in the Bolivian Altiplano: present and future , 2012 .

[31]  C. Valdivia,et al.  Making Sense of Twenty-First-Century Climate Change in the Altiplano: Observed Trends and CMIP3 Projections , 2010 .

[32]  C. Valdivia.  COPING AND ADAPTING TO CLIMATE VARIABILITY: THE ROLE OF ASSETS, NETWORKS, KNOWLEDGE AND INSTITUTIONS , 2003 .

[33]  K. Giller,et al.  Conservation agriculture and smallholder farming in Africa: The heretics' view , 2009 .

[34]  M. Altieri.  Applying Agroecology to Enhance the Productivity of Peasant Farming Systems in Latin America , 1999 .

[35]  S. Knapp.  The potatoes of Bolivia: Their breeding value and evolutionary relationships , 1990 .

[36]  Lynette Simpson,et al.  Still Left out in the Cold: Problematising Participatory Research and Development , 2004 .

[37]  E. G. Dunn,et al.  Diversification as a Risk Management Strategy in an Andean Agropastoral Community , 1996 .

[38]  S. Brush.  Farmers' Bounty: Locating Crop Diversity in the Contemporary World , 2004 .

[39]  Patricia Balvanera,et al.  The future of production systems in a globalized world , 2007 .

[40]  B. Ryan.  The diffusion of hybrid seed corn in two Iowa communities , 1943 .

[41]  James R. Veteto.  The history and survival of traditional heirloom vegetable varieties in the southern Appalachian Mountains of western North Carolina , 2007 .

[42]  K. Zimmerer.  Soil erosion and labor shortages in the Andes with special reference to Bolivia, 1953ndash;1991: Implications for “conservation-with-development” , 1993 .

[43]  M. Cane,et al.  Forecasting Andean rainfall and crop yield from the influence of El Niño on Pleiades visibility , 2000, Nature.

[44]  D. Knowler,et al.  Farmers’ adoption of conservation agriculture: A review and synthesis of recent research , 2007 .