To plow or not to plow: Endogenous strategies for preparing mangrove swamp rice fields

Abstract Land preparation practices for rice planting or sowing rely on endogenous knowledge and are compromised by climate change in the mangrove swamp rice farming in Guinea-Bissau. Interventions to adapt to changing conditions were guided by formal knowledge from completely different rice systems. These interventions did not resonate with farmers’ knowledge nor contribute much to the sustainability and resilience of mangrove swamp rice farming. To design improved land preparation strategies under changing conditions, we need to understand farmers’ knowledge and analyze the impact of plowing strategies on rice productivity. In this study, we used a mixed-methods approach, combining direct and participant observations, informal conversations, key-informant interviews, transect walks along the toposequences, and on-farm field trials conducted and managed by southern Guinea-Bissau farmers over three consecutive years. We documented, for the first time, farmers’ knowledge and practices related to their plowing strategies and co-analyzed with them the outcome of these strategies on mangrove swamp rice productivity. Our results illustrate the diversity of farmers’ practices and agroecological conditions in their mangrove swamp rice fields. This study explains how farmers take advantage of their knowledge to secure harvests under time constraints and scarce economic and labor resources for plowing in times of climate change and socio-economic transformations. We documented for the first time that under farmers’ selected agroecological conditions, unplowed plots gave similar and sometimes even significantly higher yields than plowed ones. Although plowing has many advantages, regularly skipping plowing in specific plots allows farmers to plant or sow earlier, reducing labor pressure at the peak of transplanting. By applying the concept of farming as performance, this study sheds light on both farmers’ knowledge of the diversity and complexity of the farming system and the plowing strategies developed to face growing problems and needs in mangrove swamp rice cultivation in Guinea-Bissau.