Enhancement of diffusion and adoption of local knowledge through social learning: A case study of white fly management in cotton in Haryana

Risks in agriculture are pervasive so are the adjustment landscapes ranging from research and scientists-driven to heuristic and community driven. Often local knowledge and innovations play a pivotal role in risk adjustment with low external inputs. However, many a times such local and grassroots knowledge and innovations remain confined to a narrow scale in want of any effective mechanism of its dissemination and upscaling. The present study investigated how social learning approach helped the cotton farmers to save the crop from the menace of white fly (Bemisia tabaci) by using the principle knowledge of pest management and a local knowledge which refers to application of Dr Dalal solution and use of natural predators. The cotton farmers of Haryana understood the life cycle, economic threshold level, and predators of white fly besides the preparation and use of local knowledge by participating in Farmer Field Schools (Keet Pathsala) organized by the community. Since the local knowledge had its roots in Jind district and later spreading to Hisar and other districts, a total of 120 cotton farmers were selected randomly from these 2 districts of Haryana. Out of them, 90 farmers were they who had attended Farmer Field Schools (FFS) on white fly management and 30 farmers were they who had not attended any FFS. Criteria based ranking revealed that the FFS farmers and non-FFS farmers differed significantly with respect to their ranking of local knowledge and strategy on criteria like technological efficacy, eco-friendliness, ease of use, labour-intensiveness, and cost-effectiveness. The farmers of FFSs were significantly different (p<0.01) from non-FFS farmers with respect to knowledge about effective management of white fly, having favourable attitude towards social learning approach, and extent of engagement in social learning activities. They also differed significantly (p<0.01) with respect to their social learning behavior index. Social learning was found to be effective in dissemination of local knowledge and therefore, the study endorses the integration of social learning process in up scaling and out scaling of local knowledge.