Abstract
Integrated Pest Management (IPM) is a leading complement and alternative to synthetic pesticides and a form of sustainable intensification with particular importance for tropical smallholders. Global pesticide use has grown over the past 20 years to 3.5 billion kg/year, amounting to a global market worth $45 billion. The external costs of pesticides are $4–$19 (€3–15) per kg of active ingredient applied, suggesting that IPM approaches that result in lower pesticide use will benefit, not only farmers, but also wider environments and human health. Evidence for IPM’s impacts on pesticide use and yields remains patchy. We contribute an evaluation using data from 85 IPM projects from 24 countries of Asia and Africa implemented over the past twenty years. Analysing outcomes on productivity and reliance on pesticides, we find a mean yield increase across projects and crops of 40.9% (SD 72.3), combined with a decline in pesticide use to 30.7% (SD 34.9) compared with baseline. A total of 35 of 115 (30%) crop combinations resulted in a transition to zero pesticide use. We assess successes in four types of IPM projects, and find that at least 50% of pesticide use is not needed in most agroecosystems. Nonetheless, policy support for IPM is relatively rare, counter-interventions from pesticide industry common, and the IPM challenge never done as pests, diseases and weeds evolve and move.
Highlights
Integrated Pest Management (IPM) is a leading complement and alternative to synthetic pesticides and a form of sustainable intensification with particular importance for tropical smallholders
Evaluation of two IPM-Farmer Field Schools (FFS) programmes in Sichuan, China, found that yields slightly increased whilst pesticide applications fell 40%–50% [96]
It is difficult to overcome the fears that farmers have; often these have been encouraged by the pesticide industry
Summary
Weeds, and invertebrates cause significant crop losses worldwide, and in doing so present a barrier to the achievement of global food security and poverty reduction. While the reporting of pesticide use and market data is patchy and irregular, it is generally clear that the use of synthetic pesticides in agriculture has grown steadily, and amounts to 3.5 billion kg of active ingredient (a.i.) per year. Policy changes in Indonesia in the 1980s and adoption of IPM and Farmer Field Schools (FFS) might have changed aggregate pesticide use in the early years, but national level data have not been collected since 1993 (between 1989–1993, pesticide use in Indonesia had fallen by 37%) In other contexts, such as in the UK, France, Italy, and Japan, it is likely that the economics of farming has been the main driver of reductions in use, with farmers seeking to cut variable costs where possible. This has led to large increases in herbicide use in Argentina and Brazil, but no obvious impact in the USA ([19]; though see [20])
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