Resistance of ancestral indigenous communities to agricultural innovation: epistemology and foundations of their research in Colombia

Abstract

The methodological strategies for agricultural innovation designed in Latin America since the Green Revolution have been directed towards highly technical corporate agricultural production. They seek to increase yields for the internal supply of their countries, as well as competitiveness for access to the external market of their products. Its purpose is to maximize economic profits that allow for the improvement of quality of life for most of the society. The ancestral indigenous peoples of the region, for their part, orient their daily actions towards the conservation of the traditions of their pre-Hispanic ancestors, which generates great resistance to the institutional methodological strategies designed for agricultural innovation.

This work addresses the epistemology and the principles in the construction of a hybrid methodology that considers meeting points between the modern Western vision and the pre-Hispanic indigenous vision. These are presented as clearly as possible, given that, in addition to members of the scientific community, this work is addressed to technicians responsible for technology transfer and agricultural extension, who are generally reluctant to study epistemologies and theoretical foundations.