Reinventing Indigenous Knowledge

Indigenous farming communities in Indonesia andaround the world have probably lived the way theyalways have: relying on their indigenous knowledgeand skills they learned from their parents andneighbors. The search for miracle seeds, begun in 1940's, waspart of a major effort to fight world hunger. Thedwarf Mexican wheat, for example, could producequadruple the amount of harvest, and similarly themiracle rice seed-IR8-could produce more than doublethe traditional rates of rice production, both withapplication of urea. The Green Revolution quicklyreplaced traditional agriculture. In fact, itdestroyed the existing sustainable system ofIndonesian agriculture and replaced it withfuel-based agricultural system, heavily dependent onmanufactured chemicals. On the contrary, IPM trainedfarmers to observe and collect field data and conductagro-ecological system analyses that prepared farmersto think critically and to make smart decisions abouttheir crops.This book should bring some light on valuablediscussion of the large, indeed global, problem offood production, in the long forgotten indigenousknowledge systems on a meaningful local level.