The other pedology: empirical wisdom of local people L'autre pédologie : connaissances empirirques des populations locales

People’s soil resource knowledge or ethnopedology has been scientifically evaluated, but more investigation is needed to fully understand indigenous approaches to soil perception, classification and appraisal (Furbee, 1989; Hecht, 1990; Tabor, 1990, Niemejier, 1995, among others). Comparatively, more progress has been achieved in ethnobotanical and ethnozoological research than in ethnopedological research during the last 20 years (Berlin, 1992). Despite thousands of years of validation of ethnopedology by indigenous peoples, this has not been historically reflected in soil science research (Buol et al., 1980; Krupenikov, 1993). Often, indigenous soil and land knowledge appears as an exotic corpus of primitive human experience and attitudes related with the soil resource. However, complex pedological wisdom developed much before the Christian era in China (Needham and Gwein-Djen, 1981; Chingkwei and Shenggeng, 1990), India (Abrol, 1990) and Mexico (Williams, 1975), intimately related with the major centres of plant domestication in the world (Vavilov, 1949-50; Grigg, 1974). In many tropical and subtropical areas, remarkable examples of soil knowledge from non-occidental civilizations still maintain potential and contemporary validity.