Farmers' innovations for sustainable resource management and conservation of biological diversity

Growth rates in use of chemical inputs, irrigation water (ground as well as surface), electricity etc., have increased at a pace far higher than the growth rate of food production. The reasons are not far to seek and were not difficult to predict. Yet, planners in developing countries as well as developed countries still seem to be convinced about more of the same(1). But a silent revolution has been going on, unnoticed and uncelebrated. This has never been seen as a source of healing the sick soils, souls and spirits. But can the technological and institutional innovations by small farmers in disadvantaged regions provide spur for such a revolution? We believe that these can, and our faith stems from thousands of innovations that we have already documented in the Honey Bee Network. But will these innovations be able to rescue the spirit of non-sustainably used resources on their own? Perhaps not, and hence our argument for blending the two knowledge systems, the formal and organized one with the informal and unorganized one. We narrate in part one of the paper the diagnoses of the problem. What can formal science do and can not do in the context of meeting the challenge of sustainable natural resource use. In part two we discuss the context in which farmer's innovations emerge and evolve at the individual as well as the collective level. In part three the problem of knowledge erosion is discussed and the case of Honey Bee network is presented which aims at stemming this erosion. In part four, we present some suggestions for rewarding creativity and some lessons for rethinking about the mainstream technology generation and diffusion systems.