Local Knowledge and Natural Resource Management in a Peasant Farming Community Facing Rapid Change: A Critical Examination

TL;DR

This paper examines how peasant farmers in Tanzania adapt their local knowledge to environmental and market challenges, revealing differences in adaptation effectiveness and implications for sustainable development policies.

Contribution

It provides empirical insights into how local knowledge influences natural resource management and adaptation strategies among impoverished peasant farmers.

Findings

Differential farmer knowledge explains variation in adaptation responses.

Some farmers experience adaptation slippages, others adapt effectively.

Local knowledge impacts the dissemination of sustainable agriculture technologies.

Abstract

Environmental degradation is a major global problem. Its impacts are not just environmental, but also economic, with degradation recognised as a key cause of reduced agricultural productivity and rural poverty in the developing world. The degradation literature typically emphasises common property or open access natural resources, and how perverse incentives or missing institutions lead optimising private actors to degrade them. By contrast, the present paper considers degradation occurring on private farms in peasant communities. This is a critical yet delicate issue, given the poverty of such areas and questions about the role of farmers in either degrading or regenerating rural lands. The paper examines natural resource management by peasant farmers in Tanzania. Its key concern is how the local knowledge informing their management decisions adapts to challenges associated with environmental degradation and market liberalisation. Given their poverty, this question could have direct implications for the capacity of households to meet their livelihood needs. Based on fresh empirical data, the paper finds that differential farmer knowledge helps explain the large differences in how households respond to the degradation challenge. The implication is that some farmers adapt more effectively to emerging challenges than others, despite all being rational, optimising agents who follow the strategies they deem best. The paper thus provides a critique of local knowledge, implying that some farmers experience adaptation slippages while others race ahead with effective adaptations. The paper speaks to the chronic poverty that plagues many rural communities in the developing world. It helps explain the failure of proven sustainable agriculture technologies to disseminate readily beyond early innovators. Its key policy implication is to inform improved capacity building for such communities.