“Pananrang”: A Guidance of Buginese Farmers in Farming

Abstract

Each agrarian society had knowledge about how to interact with and understand nature. Some knowledge gained from nature were recorded and codified as inheritable knowledge from generation to generation. As in Buginese who lived at the southern part of the island of Sulawesi has such as knowledge that was named “Pananrang” or “Lontara Laongruma”. The Pananrang was a knowledge developed based on lunar system (qamariah) as a reference for the farmer in estimating the season, time of planting and so on. The pananrang used as source of information in this article owned by a well experince and knowlegable farmer in District of Wajo, South Sulawesi Province, Indonesia. It was found that knowledge in panarang was developed based on the principle of regularity of events through 8 years (sipariama) observation. It contain rich of knowledge about farming and other everyday activities in yearly, monthly, and daily time period. It is found that the Pananrang which contains rich knowledge about farming that is still used by majority of Bugineses farmers as source of information in making decision on their farms. It is concluded that the pananrang is valuable and functional knowledge that can be used as a partner for modern scientific knowledge in promoting agriculture development.