Integrated pest management empowers rice farmers
Integrated pest management empowers rice farmers
JAKARTA (JP): Shortly after sunrise, a group of 25 farmers in Rejomulyo village, East Java, gather at the edge of the village rice fields. An instructor stands and asks, "What will our activity be today?" One farmer responds confidently, "To conduct a field study of natural enemies."
There follows an animated discussion about natural enemies -- the insects that prey upon rice parasites -- after which the farmers disappear into the field to observe and collect these helpful bugs.
This is just one example of the Integrated Pest Management Field Schools that are becoming an increasingly common sight in Indonesian villages.
Integrated Pest Management (IPM) is an innovative approach to rice farming that seeks to boost rice production while minimizing the ecological and human damage caused by pesticide use.
In the past, pesticides have been part and parcel of Indonesian rice farming. Farmers tend to apply pesticides whenever they observe an outbreak of insects.
Often the proliferating insects are harmless, but the effect of pesticides can be all too real, as the chemicals frequently prove toxic to farmers, their crops, ground water and the surrounding ecosystems.
The danger of indiscriminate spraying became palpable in 1986 when an outbreak of brown planthoppers (wereng coklat) threatened Indonesia's hard-won rice self-sufficiency. After a spate of sprayings failed to quell the outbreak, research revealed that pesticides had actually encouraged the brown planthopper by killing off its natural predators.
President Soeharto took swift action, banning 57 of the 65 pesticides used on rice at the time and beginning the elimination of all government subsidies on insecticides.
The government also began channeling increased resources into the country's fledgling IPM program.
Integrated Pest Management rests on the philosophy that agricultural fields are complex, living systems and that the application of pesticides is more often a disruption than a benefit to those systems.
IPM therefore seeks to replace pesticide use with natural approaches to controlling agricultural pests. These techniques include growing a strong, healthy crop that can resist pests, effective crop rotation, and encouraging the natural enemies of crop parasites.
"The goal of IPM is to minimize the damage done by pests and to maximize field productivity by maintaining the delicate harmony of the agroecosystem," explains Prof. Ida Nyoman Oka, who headed the Indonesian National IPM Program Working Group for several years and is still active in IPM activities.
Ecological approaches to pest management have, of course, been around for decades. What makes Indonesia's IPM program unique is its innovative approach to farmer education, which is accomplished through "Farmer Field Schools" -- twelve-week, hands-on programs held right in the rice fields.
These "schools without walls" form the core of the IPM program and to date have been held in thousands of villages across the archipelago. Funding for these schools is provided by the Indonesian government, the U.S. Agency for International Development and the World Bank.
The United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) provides technical assistance.
Instead of teaching a fixed set of techniques or practices, field schools teach farmers to understand their rice fields as systems that evolve and change.
"No two fields are the same; no two seasons are the same," explains Russ Dilts of the United Nations FAO. "To teach farmers a specific set of practices is self-defeating. Those techniques might be irrelevant to a particular field or they could become outdated as the field grows and changes."
Instead, field schools help farmers understand how their fields grow and how the insects living in the fields interact. IPM farmers become IPM experts who can test new techniques, evaluate their effectiveness, and then decide whether or not to implement them.
"Through field schools, farmers gain a holistic understanding of how the various organisms in the rice field affect one another," says Andrea Yates of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
"This makes the program truly sustainable, because the farmers can continue to monitor and assess their crops long after the field school has concluded."
Unique approach
Underlying the success of IPM Farmer Field Schools is a unique approach to education, one that does not simply pass on knowledge, but enables the farmer to learn for him or herself.
"Field school trainers do not 'lecture' their students," explains Prof. Oka. Rather, they employ the "Socratic method" of asking questions that allow the student to derive his or her own answers.
Instead of describing a specific insect, for example, trainers guide the farmers through a series of questions -- "where did you find it?","what was it doing?" -- that allows the farmers to draw their own conclusions about the insect, its habits, and its helpfulness or harmfulness to the field.
Once a farmer discovers this method of questioning, he can continue the learning process on his own. As Kusni, an East Javanese rice farmer put it: "Now our teacher doesn't teach us; we teach ourselves. Now we understand."
IPM students even learn to conduct their own research, recording their field observations and comparing these findings over months and years. Many create "insect zoos", isolated sections of the rice fields where specific bugs are kept for observation and testing.
This unique approach to education gives the farmers a sense of "ownership" in the IPM program.
"IPM empowers rice farmers by giving them the tools to act independently in improving their fields," says Russ Dilts of FAO. As one farmer commented of IPM, "before, when we followed an agricultural program, we just did what we were told. Now we really understand what we're doing."
In recent years, Indonesia's IPM program has begun to take on a life of its own. Local governments, which have always supported the program, are becoming increasingly involved in organizing and supporting field school programs.
"A lot of spontaneous training is also occurring," notes Andrea Yates of USAID. "Farmers that have completed the field school are often approached by others and asked about IPM. There seems to be a growing interest in the program in many villages."
The results of the IPM Program's intensive efforts speak for themselves. Over 400,000 farmers have completed field school training.
In fields using IPM techniques, pesticide expenditures have dropped by 50-60 percent since 1985 while rice production has risen.
The Indonesian government, in turn, has saved an estimated Rp 200 billion annually since it eliminated pesticide subsidies in the late 1980s.
What these figures do not measure is the immense benefit to human health and to the environment that reduced pesticide use entails.
The future of IPM in Indonesia looks equally bright. The program demonstrated its staying power in 1991 when a plague of white rice stemborers (penggerek batang padi putih) descended on rice paddies in West Java.
Calls rang out for massive spraying, yet the local governments decided to stay with IPM techniques. In a miraculous mobilization, field trainers issued basic instruction to over 300,000 farmers on how to handle the stemborer infestation.
Within months the outbreak was brought under control with minimal damage to IPM rice paddies. Those fields that did apply insecticides actually fared much worse.
Successes like this one have earned Indonesia's IPM program worldwide renown, and officials from developed and developing nations alike have come to study the program.
Since IPM hinges on a universal "learning process" and not a location-specific set of facts or techniques, the program shows promise of helping farmers worldwide to increase their productivity while at the same time protecting the environment.
"In this sense," says Russ Dilts, "IPM is valuable and relevant not only to Indonesia, and not just to farmers, but to the well-being of the planet in general."
-- Dean Carignan