Adoption of indigenous paddy cultivation practices by tribal farmers of 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 can effectively be utilized for sustainable agricultural development of tribal areas by appropriately blending the ITAPs with recommended production technological package. In this context, a study was done for collecting, classifying, documenting, analyzing the rationality, and studying the adoption of the selected ITAPs in low land paddy. About 65 ITAPs on low land paddy, in different clusters of villages of Kolli hills were documented. For assessing the rationality, the selected ITAPs were divided into two groups. The first group consisted of 35 ITAPs were related to crop production and the second 30 ITAPs were related to plant protection. Having identified and selected the list of ITAPs with their rationality scores, further analysis was undertaken to test verify their extent of adoption. The rational and effective ITAPs should be blended into the technology package for transfer of technology, so that the agricultural development will be sustainable.