Rationality and adoption of primitive crop protection methods followed by tribal farmers in Tamil Nadu

Abstract

Indigenous Tribal Agricultural Practices (ITAPs) have facilitated intensive farming for a long period of time without significant deterioration of land or decline in crop production. The tribes of the Kolli hills of Namakkal district in Tamil Nadu possessed rich tradition, heritage and experience in agriculture. Their rich wisdom in ITAPs in Plant Protection can effectively be utilized for sustainable agricultural development of tribal areas by appropriately blending the ITAPs with recommended production technological package. Hence, there is an immense need to collect, document, rationalize and refine those ITAPs in Plant Protection before they become totally obsolete. In this context a study was done for collecting, classifying, documenting, analyzing the rationality, and studying the adoption of the selected ITAPs in Plant Protection aspects. About 41 ITAPs on Insect Pest Management, in different clusters of villages of Kolli hills were documented. For assessing the rationality, the selected ITAPs were sent to 50 Plant Protection scientists. Having identified and selected the list of ITAPs with their rationality scores, further analysis was undertaken to test verify their extent of adoption. Out of 41 ITAPs in Insect Pest Management, 29 ITAPs were rational and 12 ITAPs were found to be irrational as rated by the scientists. Overall extent of adoption of ITAPs was found to be more than 50 per cent as they were practiced for quite long time. The rational and effective ITAPs should be blended into the technology package for transfer of technology, so that the agricultural development will be sustainable. This paper discusses about the practice wise rationality and adoption of ITAPs on Insect Pest Management by tribal farmers.