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Localised agricultural knowledge and food production in sub‐Saharan Africa
Author(s) -
Séhouéto Lazare
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
international social science journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.237
H-Index - 43
eISSN - 1468-2451
pISSN - 0020-8701
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-2451.2006.00597.x
Subject(s) - agriculture , folklore , agricultural productivity , order (exchange) , politics , production (economics) , traditional knowledge , adaptation (eye) , natural (archaeology) , natural resource economics , geography , sociology , economics , political science , ecology , psychology , anthropology , microeconomics , archaeology , finance , indigenous , neuroscience , law , biology
In Benin localised agricultural knowledge is produced or taken on board by the farmers according to their specific cognitive frames and social logic. It is therefore important to analyse them in their complexity. The analysis of farmers' knowledge as to the choice of associating or not associating various crops shows that, while the reasons advanced in the first case are above all ecological (more than 80 per cent of the responses), those put forward in the second are at once economic and ecological. Yet the farming calendar is not merely an adaptation to weather and climatic requirements: it brings together the implications of politics, economics, religion, and natural constraints. In this article I argue that to promote this localised knowledge which helps the majority of men and women who live south of the Sahara to survive, scientists must make more rigorous descriptions and interpretations of localised knowledge, in order to avoid the risk of becoming trapped in folklore or the mystical.