For many centuries, the indigenous agricultural and cultural systems of the Serer people of Senegambia ensured soil fertility, crop rotation, tree preservation, mixed farming and herding, yielding one of the highest population densities in the pre-colonial Sahel. In the 20th century, as population grew, soil fertility declined and climate change produced regular droughts, Serer farming systems changed to creatively combine many indigenous techniques with some modern practices. The Serer hybrid farming system that emerged especially after the late 1960s is demonstrably more productive than modern or indigenous techniques practiced in pure form (Faye et al., 2020). Given the productivity of hybrid farming techniques, this article asks: Who adopts them? And under what circumstances? Building on years of participant observation supplemented with a survey of 742 Serer farmers, I tested several competing explanations from neo-liberal, feminist, and cultural ecological approaches to understand why and among whom hybrid farming occurs. Multiple regression analysis shows a strong relationship between cultural syncretism and hybrid farming. Farming techniques are not just a matter of isolated, individual choice, but also work through the social and cultural systems that support agriculture. The more these systems reflect established patterns of mixing cultural elements, borrowing from outside and blending into and transforming Serer tradition, the greater the likelihood that farmers will use hybrid techniques. These findings have implications both for agricultural sustainability and for recognizing the sociocultural embeddedness of seemingly individual choices.

多个世纪以来，塞内冈比亚塞勒人的土著农业和文化体系确保了土壤肥力，轮作，树木保育，混合耕作和放牧，是殖民前萨赫勒地区人口密度最高的国家之一。在20世纪，随着人口的增长，土壤肥力的下降以及气候变化导致了经常性的干旱，塞勒（Serer）的耕作制度发生了变化，将许多土著技术与一些现代实践创造性地结合在一起。特别是在1960年代末后出现的Serer混合农业系统显然比纯净形式的现代或本地技术生产力更高（Faye等，2020）。考虑到混合农业技术的生产力，本文提出以下要求：谁收养他们？在什么情况下？在多年参与者观察的基础上，对742名Serer农民进行了调查，我测试了来自新自由主义，女权主义和文化生态学方法的几种相互竞争的解释，以了解为什么以及在其中发生混合农业。多元回归分析表明，文化融合与杂交农业之间有着密切的关系。农业技术不仅是孤立的个人选择问题，而且还通过支持农业的社会和文化体系发挥作用。这些系统越能体现出既有的文化元素混合，从外部借用，融入和转变Serer传统的既定模式，则农民使用混合技术的可能性就越大。