Increasing attention has been given to “indigenous” knowledge in Third World rural societies as a potential basis for sustainable agricultural development. It has been found that many people have functional knowledge systems pertaining to their resources and environment, which are based on experience and experimentation, and which are sometimes based on unique epistemologies. Efforts have been made to include such knowledge in participatory research and projects. This paper discusses socio-political, institutional, and ethical issues that need to be considered in order (...) to understand the actual limitations and contributions of such knowledge systems. It reviews the nature of local knowledge and suggests the need to recognize its unique values yet avoid romanticized views of its potential. Local knowledge and alternative bottom-up projects continue to be marginalized because of the dominance of conventional top-down R&approaches, pressures of agrochemical firms, scientific professionalism, and for other political-economic reasons. It is argued that the exploitation of local knowledge by formal institutions should be avoided; instead, people need to establish legitimacy of their knowledge for themselves, as a form of empowerment. (shrink)

Recent trends in agricultural science have emphasized the need to make local people active participants in the research and development process. Working under the populist banner “Farmer First”, the focus has been on bridging gaps between development professionals and local people, pointing to the inadequate understanding of insiders' knowledge, practices, and processes by outsiders.The purpose of this paper is to expose the paradox of the prevailing populist conception of power and knowledge, and to challenge the simple notion that social processes (...) follow straightforward and systemic patterns and can thus be manipulated with a transfer of power from outside to inside. The authors view “knowledge” as a social process and knowledge systems in terms of a multiplicity of actors and networks through which certain kinds of information are communicated and negotiated, and not as single, cohesive structures, stocks or stores. The guiding phrase is “the analysis of difference”, which suggests that knowledge is multilayered, fragmentary, and diffuse, not unitary and systematized. It emerges as a product of the interaction and dialogue between different actors and networks of actors with conflicting loyalties who negotiate over “truth” claims and battle over contrasting images and contesting interests. The paper challenges those promoting Farmer First approaches to reassess how people in different agroecological and sociocultural contexts make sense of and deal with constraining and enabling processes related to research and extension; how they attempt, through recourse to various discursive means, to enroll one another in their various endeavors; and how they use relations of power in their struggles to gain access to and control of social and political space. (shrink)

Local knowledge (both technological and sociological) and communication systems represent a logical starting point and a rich body of resources for successful agricultural research, development, and extension (RD&E). Drawing upon concrete examples from Asia, Africa, and Latin America, this essay presents an overview of definitions, topics, and applications of local knowledge in agricultural RD&E. Also noted are caveats, future research and training needs, and human values issues related to the study and utilization of local knowledge systems and their products.

Farmers are experts on their natural environment and are innate experimenters. However they do not know everything. Filling in gaps of missing farmer knowledge can help them improve their experiments. The authors designed and taught a course to Honduran farmers that effectively covered a number of key points on insect ecology and biology that farmers had not understood. After receiving the course many farmers did experiments to solve pest problems without synthetic pesticides.