Ethnoedaphology as an Integrating Process between Academy and Peasant Knowledge in the Productive System of Coffee (<i>Coffea arabica</i> L.) of Southwestern Colombia

Abstract

Community knowledge about agricultural land and its management constitutes a complex system of wisdom, with universal principles and categories similar or complementary to those used by modern soil science. However, soil management is only recognized from the point of view of agronomy and academia, covering problems in rural areas at the time of adopting agricultural alternatives. For this reason, peasant knowledge was characterized and related to scientific knowledge, in the valuation of land properties in the coffee (Coffea arabica L.) production system. The study was carried out in four villages in the municipality of Buesaco (Nariño, Colombia), with humid pre-mountain forest conditions, an average temperature of 18˚C, annual rainfall of 1400 mm, and an altitude of 1959 m. The study was carried out in the municipality of Buesaco (Nariño, Colombia). Through field visits, priority was given to farms with coffee production systems under different types of shade. A semi-structured survey was applied to learn about the social, environmental, productive, ancestral, and cultural components, with the application of participatory methodologies allowed to learn about traditional management and practices in the soil component. The results allowed us to identify four types of production systems from coffee without shade to coffee in association with different multipurpose woody perennials and mosses. Diverse dynamics of crop and land management are presented. Several references were found to differentiate land types such as color, texture, production and fertility, being characteristics that are associated to classify soil quality and make management decisions and type of fertilization. Through the perception of the farmers, six land classes with different characteristics were identified, relating the characterization with what was obtained in the chemical analysis of lands. It can be concluded that the perception of coffee growers, dark shades in the land representing better quality than light shaded soils, both associated with characteristics such as quantity of organic matter, presence of weeds, growth and development of the crop, perceptions that coincide with the variables of scientific knowledge such as availability of nutrients, organic matter, pH and texture.