The Development of IPM Training in
Asia
Almost one
third of the world’s population consists of Asian farming households.
Among developing countries in the region, the proportion of the population
engaged in agriculture lies between 42% in Indonesia and 96% in Nepal.
Most of these farming families are small holders. In Vietnam for example,
the share of small holders in the total population is 60%. These small farmers are the
bedrock of Asian economic development.
Three decades
ago, an immense social and economic experiment was launched in Asia. The
experiment, which has subsequently come to be known as The Green
Revolution, was largely based on an ‘engineering’ approach to smallholder
agriculture. Agricultural
productivity could be raised by making certain inputs more readily
available to small farmers was the main assumption of the approach. This
approach was most successful where there:
Small farmers,
particularly those located in well-irrigated areas with good soils,
responded positively to the opportunities that easier access to these
inputs presented. Farm productivity increased substantially. The average rice yields in the
region doubled between the 1960’s and the 1990’s.
Helping small farmers to build
sustainable, productive agricultural systems proved more difficult than
was originally supposed. Green Revolution programmes were designed to
disseminate new technologies as quickly as possible. Because of the
tremendous number of small farmers in most Asian developing countries, the
dissemination process was greatly simplified to facilitate rapid adoption
of new inputs and methods. Agricultural development programmes came to
rely on highly centralised systems designed to deliver input packages and
information to small farmers. Although this approach succeeded in
introducing small farmers to the new inputs, new problems quickly
emerged.
The centralised
systems were unable to take into account the reality of pronounced
agro-ecological diversity within countries, regions, and even within
villages. The inclusion of routine pesticide applications within the input
packages often caused severe ecological disruptions, most notably the rise
of pest resurgence and resistance. Rather than reducing production risks
for small farmers, the input packages frequently generated new, more
serious threats to the sustainability and profitability of small-scale
cultivation. Together with this disruption of the ecosystem came new
threats to farmer health and the introduction of millions of tons of
poisonous substances to the fields, waterways, food, and homes of rural
people.
The inability
of Green Revolution programmes to tailor input use 
to local conditions extended
beyond pesticides to inorganic fertilisers and seeds. Centrally-designed
nutrient packages needed to be adjusted to field-specific soil conditions.
The top-down extension of these packages did not give farmers the
knowledge they needed to make these adjustments. Improved varieties were
also introduced uniformly without assessing local needs and
conditions. In many regions
production risks were often actually increased while local biological
diversity was dangerously reduced. As a result, variation in
yields increased in step with average yields and the marginal productivity
of physical inputs began a long downward trend. More and more inputs were
needed to achieve ever smaller incremental increases in production per
unit area.
Of equal, if
not greater importance, were the social implications of the engineering
approach to farming systems. The government agencies that sprang up to
disseminate Green Revolution technologies were target oriented and often
rigid in their interpretation of their mission. The pressure which these
agencies put on small farmers to use inputs in accordance with
centrally-determined recommendations contributed to a ‘de-skilling’ of
rural communities. Farmers were expected to be passive recipients of new
technologies rather than active innovators.
During the
1970’s and 1980’s, it became increasingly apparent that pest resurgence
and resistance caused by the indiscriminate use of insecticides posed an
immediate threat to the gains of the Green Revolution. At the same time,
research was being conducted which demonstrated the viability of
biological control of major rice pests. Gaps still existed, however,
between the science generated in research institutions and common farmer
practice conditioned by years of aggressive promotion of pesticide use.
Over the
ensuing years, a number of approaches were tried to bring IPM methods to
small farmers - particularly rice farmers - in Asia. These approaches had mixed
results. Many experts claimed that the principles of IPM were too complex
for small farmers to master.
These people maintained that centrally designed messages were still
the only way to convince farmers to change their practices.
By the end of
the 1980s, however, a new concept emerged in Southeast Asia. This concept
held that the problem was not farmers themselves, but rather the methods
used to disseminate technological packages among farm communities. These methods were technologically
driven, not farmer driven.
Given appropriate training methods that would empower farmers
through learning, farmers could:
IPM Farmer
Field Schools (FFS) were first carried out in Indonesia, and later
extended to other countries in the region. Field Schools give small
farmers practical experience in agro-ecosystem analysis, providing the
tools they need to practice IPM in their own fields. FFS also provide a
natural starting point for farmer innovation covering the whole range of
issues relating to crop management, from insect balance to plant health,
from soils to water control and from weed management to varietal
selection.
The success of
IPM FFS has opened up a new approach to the development of sustainable,
small-scale agricultural systems. Farmers, having demonstrated their
enthusiasm for learning and applying ecological principles, have pointed
the way forward to a future when they will no longer be viewed as passive
recipients of recommendations generated in far-off research laboratories.
Farmers have shown that the managerial necessity of taking local
biological diversity seriously is matched by an intellectual curiosity to
understand the ecological process and eagerness to formulate
community-wide approaches to agricultural development.
The central
lesson of programme implementation over the past decade is that the
complex ecological and social context of IPM argues for a sustained effort
combining elements of technological development, adult education, local
organisation, alliance building and lobbying. Scientific excellence and
adherence to ecological principles provide a strong technical basis for
IPM development, and the application of participatory, non-formal adult
education methods represent a real advance over models based on
information dissemination and the delivery of simple messages. But these
in themselves are not enough. The long-term development of a sustainable
small-scale agriculture also requires strong farmer groups and the
linkages between these groups and the wider community.
From
this perspective, IPM Farmer Fields Schools are not an end in themselves,
but rather a good starting point for the development of a sustainable
agricultural system in a given locality. The FFS provide a first
experience with experimentation based on ecological principles,
participatory training and non-formal education methods. Once this
foundation has been laid, farmers are better able to act on their own
initiatives, and to sharpen their observation, research and communicative
skills. Thus the Farmer Field School sets in motion a longer-term process,
in which opportunities are created for local leadership to emerge and for
new, locally devised strategies to be tested.
