Abstract

CHILON CAMACHO, Eduardo. Sources of origin, purpose and differences between western and non-western Andean soil fertility knowledge. Apthapi [online]. 2018, vol.4, n.2, pp. 1168-1187. ISSN 0102-0304.

In view of the current deterioration of agricultural soils, it is necessary to compare and experimental epistemological analysis of western and non-western Andean knowledge of Soil Fertility science, to differentiate its sources of origin, its purposes, its differences and try alternative solutions. The western knowledge linked to the positivist method, and the atomistic and mechanistic perspectives, dramatically altered the look and the dialogue about the natural world; it changed its focus on agricultural soils, turning it into a machine, which had to be exploited until its exhaustion, reaching its maximum expression with the "green revolution" and agroexportation. On the other hand, the non-western Andean knowledge of ancestral origin, which underlies our peoples of millennial origin, despite the historical and scientific evidence of their existence and their high degree of development, has been systematically degraded and attacked, both by chroniclers and conquerors who have imposed their knowledge in blood and fire, a situation that continues to this day, through various researchers, related to Western neoliberalism. But the serious challenges posed by the current global problem, forces us more than to confront this knowledge, to study and generate a synergistic knowledge, which contribute to the recovery and conservation of the fertility of agricultural soils.

Keywords : Agricultural soils; epistemology of soil science; Soil fertility; Andean ancestral agriculture; organic agriculture; agro-export agricultura.