Many sustainable agricultural practices are based on local and traditional farming knowledge. This article examines the conservation and loss of three traditional practices in the Bolivian Altiplano that agronomic research has shown increase the resiliency of small farmers in the face of climate-related risks. These practices are the use of manure, the use of local forecasts and risk-management strategies, and the preservation of crop biodiversity. Although these practices are widely used today, farmers have been steadily abandoning them during the past decade. This article examines the characteristics of those who maintain and those who abandon traditional practices to see if the abandonment of local knowledge can be explained by the adoption-diffusion literature. This research does not support the adoption-diffusion literature; although the factors related to conservation are slightly different for each practice, the findings do not support the idea that young, educated, and wealthier farmers are more likely to reject local knowledge. Instead, off-farm activities such as migration, employment, and trade seem to be related to the decline in local practices as each affects the availability of labor and the availability of people to learn these practices.
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