Local Knowledge and Agricultural Sustainability: A Case Study of Pradhan Tribe in Adilabad District

For centuries, farmers have planned agricultural production and conserved natural resources by adopting indigenous knowledge. The development of indigenous knowledge systems, including management of natural environment, has been a matter of survival to the people who generated these systems. With the rapid environmental, social, economic and political changes occurring in many areas inhabited by indigenous people, comes the danger that the indigenous knowledge they possess will be overwhelmed and lost forever. In this backdrop, the study aims at understanding the importance of such farmers' knowledge and role in sustainable agriculture among the Pradhan Tribe in Adilabad District. The paper presents some empirical data from the Pradhan Tribe of Andhra Pradesh which highlights the community's indigenous agricultural knowledge and the changes over time. These custodians of indigenous knowledge and world view practices play a very important role in agricultural development. They have evolved and adopted several mechanisms for land, soil and crop management including natural pest control. The study was conducted in the year 2008 at different times. The Pradhans are still subsistence farmers, who primarily depend on agriculture. Subsistence economy and food security of the Pradhans depends mainly on cultivation in the fields and kitchen gardens. They cultivate pulses such as turichi dhar (red gram) and mungachi dhar; vegetables such as beans, tomato and pumpkin; and millets such as jowar, in the fields for consumption. The study concludes by recommending that indigenous knowledge and practices are useful for sustenance. Before such precious knowledge gets lost, it would be wise to protect and promote indigenous knowledge and wisdom widely for self sustenance in order to reduce poverty and hunger among indigenous people.