Abstract:
The farmers who engage in intensive subsistence agriculture directly depends
on the natural environment and its processes. Accordingly, the farmers must
have an appropriate environmental understanding of their natural
environment. In intensive subsistence agriculture, the framers are constantly
connected with environmental factors and processes like weather, topography,
soil, drainage, and vegetation, etc. Especially, in the Dry Climatic Zone of Sri
Lanka, there are many environmental fluxes Belong unaware the above
environmental factors can create environmental problems like soil erosion,
soil degradation, deforestation, salinity, forest burning and biological threats.
Likewise, the main objective of the current research is to examine the level of
environmental sensitivity of rural farmers and how they apply their knowledge
to sustain agriculture. This study was done under the approaches of
Agricultural Geography and Human Ecology with the mixed method. A
sample of fourteen farmers was selected to collect primary data from the
Thambana domain belonging to the Madagama Agrarian Services Area in
Moneragala District. The random sampling method was applied to Madagama
selected as the simple according to a random sampling method to obtain
primary data. Primary data were collected by questionnaires, interviews and
site observation. Quantitative data was analyzed by MS excel and GIS
software, then produced ables and charts for presenting evidence. The study
clearly shows that the environmental sensitivity of farmers is significantly low
and consequently, the research revealed that the lack of environmental
awareness has led to environmental problems such as greening, forest burning,
soil degradation, salinity, animal hunting, and wild animal invasions, and
environmental pollution. The farmer awareness programs on their natural
environment should be conducted by the Agrarian service centers because all
the farmers in Dry Climatic Zone suffer from the results of climate changes.
