A comment on a recent post suggested that one should “start with the assumption that farmers know what is in their best interest.” No doubt that is as true of Indian farmers as the rest of us, but unfortunately in many cases there are other pressures out there that mean that you can’t act on your perceived long-term self-interest, or indeed the information on which you can make that determination is not available or turns out to be faulty. As with the sweetleaf item that started this, we don’t know the full story, so we should be careful not to jump to conclusions, but an article in today’s Hindu newspaper describes a decision by farmers that seems to have gone wrong. Agricultural biodiversity, and its associated knowledge, is an important reason – maybe the most important reason – why unfortunate decisions don’t always result in catastrophe.