Culture, ethnicity, and crop choice: insights from tribal and non-tribal farmers in Adilabad District, India

Voorhaar, M and Kumra, V R and Kholova, J and Garin, V (2025) Culture, ethnicity, and crop choice: insights from tribal and non-tribal farmers in Adilabad District, India. Agriculture and Human Values (TSI), 42. pp. 2961-2978. ISSN 0889-048X

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Abstract

Efforts to increase the adoption of modern crop varieties among smallholder farmers have limited success, especially among vulnerable communities. We argue that, before analyzing constraints to adoption, we first need to understand why farmers decide to cultivate certain crops. Beyond well-known (environmental, socio-economic, technological, and policy related) factors, the role of ethnicity and culture is relevant as well. We investigate how ethnicity and culture are correlated with crop choice during the post-rainy season among farmers in Adilabad District, India. We adapted the Hofstede Cultural Values Scale to operationalize and measure culture in these farming communities. It represents a tool to characterize culture along six dimensions, including attitudes toward change, individualism, and masculinity. Our results show significant differences between tribal and non-tribal farmers in terms of crop choice and cultural values, and these two types of variables “hang together” in an intuitive way. Tribal farmers mostly grow sorghum for subsistence and fodder purposes, while non-tribal farmers focus on producing cash-crops (chickpea, rice, maize). They also have weaker preferences for hierarchy, display a more collectivist (less individualistic) attitude, and show greater resistance to changing their traditional ways. Farmers’ ethnic and cultural background should be taken into consideration when breeding or designing interventions aiming to increase dissemination of new varieties.

Item Type:	Article
Divisions:	Global Research Program - Accelerated Crop Improvement
CRP:	UNSPECIFIED
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Culture, Ethnicity, Technology adoption, Smallholder farmers, Tribal communities
Subjects:	Others > Smallholder Farmers Others > Crop Physiology Others > Smallholder Agriculture
Depositing User:	Mr Nagaraju T
Date Deposited:	04 Mar 2026 06:29
Last Modified:	04 Mar 2026 06:29
URI:	http://oar.icrisat.org/id/eprint/13517
Official URL:	https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10460-0...
Projects:	UNSPECIFIED
Funders:	Czech University of Life Sciences Prague
Acknowledgement:	The authors would like to express their highest appreciation to all the participating farmers who have been part of our study, the management and field officers of CCD Utnoor for their support regarding data collection and logistics on-ground, GEMS team of the Crop Physiology & Modelling department of ICRISAT for their financial and logistic support, and Erwin Bulte (Wageningen University & Research) and Robert Lensink (University of Groningen) for their guidance and feedback on the manuscript.
Links:	Google Scholar

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