Farmer Knowledge and the Politics of Climate Resilience

It is frequently argued that local or traditional farmer knowledge must play a vital role in shaping climate-resilientClimate-resilient agricultural development in southern India. At present, however, the Indian agricultural extension system has an uncomfortable relationship with farmer knowledge. Typically, it has pursued a relatively top-down and linear technology transfer approach in which new technologies and cultivation methods are designed off-farm and promoted as innovations to displace local practices. Recently, this mode of extension has been challenged by approaches that foreground local knowledge, networks, and experience, including the validation of landracesLandraces and cultivation practices that minimize external inputs. Drawing on material from three different case studies of agricultural extension projects in Telangana and Karnataka, we address the power relations and livelihood strategies that underpin the interaction between these different bodies of knowledge in rural south India. To explain what is at stake, we emphasize how the category of local farmer knowledge is often presented too narrowly. Local farmer knowledge is not solely concerned with cropping choices, landraces, cultivation practices, etc. It is simultaneously knowledge of how to manage the accompanying social relations that underpin agricultural livelihoods including complex market transactions with multiple agents, credit/debit relations, labor management, and networks for social learning. Acknowledging this expanded framework of farmer knowledge is vital for any meaningful pursuit of rural resilience.