Résumé
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.