Abstract
The Tsimihety people practice three forms of rice cultivation: shifting cultivation of upland rice, broadcasting cultivation of wet rice and transplanting cultivation of wet rice. The upland rice is not a staple and its annual yield is generally not high, but when cultivation is carried out by domestic labor forces in uphill areas where wet rice fields can not be opened with their irrigation technique, the cost performance of this shifting cultivation becomes maximal. The transplanting cultivation of wet rice is a newly introduced technique in the survey area, and the introduction of a new variety, IR-8, has more than doubled the general yield per hectare obtained by broadcasting conventional varieties. This high yield of transplanted rice is obvious to every peasant. However, the majority of peasants choose to adhere to conventional broadcasting with its small yield. This choice is neither conservative nor conventional but strategic, because individual peasants always take into account wider considerations such as the cost of labor, the developmental cycle of their own domestic group, and the geographical conditions of their own rice fields, in deciding whether to adopt transplanting cultivation.
