IPM That Works: The UN FAO IPM Programme and the Global IPM Facility
by Jessica Hamburger
While the World Bank has
rarely succeeded in its attempts to promote integrated pest management
(IPM), two United Nations organizations have made steady progress
in this area. The Food and Agriculture Organization's (FAO's) Programme
for Community IPM in Asia has developed exemplary field-based programs.
Building on this experience, the Global IPM Facility has supported
similar field-based efforts and policy work on IPM in Africa, Asia,
Latin America and the Middle East.
FAO Community IPM
The FAO developed its IPM
program in the rice paddies of Southeast Asia. Following on the
heels of the Green Revolution, the program was a response to the
agricultural crises caused by reliance on broad-spectrum pesticides
to control pests. FAO's IPM program was different from the IPM that
evolved in the United States, where experts developed methods and
taught them to growers. In Asia, it still retained a strong scientific
basis, but the farmer became the expert.
The FAO's Community IPM
Programme, which now operates in 12 countries in South and Southeast
Asia, uses a training approach based on the farmer field school.
In farmer field schools, farmers learn to observe the development
of their crops and the numbers of pests and beneficial insects in
their fields. Based on their analysis of the agricultural ecosystem,
farmers make decisions about how to manage their crops and pests
for maximum yield and minimal financial cost and environmental damage.
They learn to conduct their own experiments, comparing fields managed
using IPM to fields managed with conventional techniques. More than
two million farmers in Asia have graduated from farmer field schools
since 1990.1
When farmer field school
graduates plan and manage their own IPM activities and organizations,
this is known as "community IPM." It can include IPM training conducted
by farmers for other farmers, continuing experimentation and field
studies conducted throughout several cropping seasons, IPM farmer
clubs, and farmer advocacy and efforts to obtain funding from local
government for IPM activities.
In one district in Indonesia,
for example, several farmer field school alumni became Farmer IPM
Trainers, who then conducted farmer fields schools in other villages.
One village organized an IPM Alumni Association, which has established
an IPM alumni loan fund, created a field observation team, and organized
a project with the goal of selling pesticide-free rice. In another
village, farmer field school alumni have conducted field studies
at their own expense and shared the results with their neighbors.
One village cooperative rejected a credit package that included
an in-kind loan of pesticides and arranged to get cash instead.
As a result of all these IPM activities, four out of 12 pesticide
kiosks in the district have closed and the rest are losing sales.
Meanwhile, farmers' yields and incomes have increased, as their
pesticide and fertilizer costs have gone down.2
Global IPM Facility
The Global IPM Facility
is spreading the IPM farmer field school concepts and methodologies
developed in Asia to other parts of the world. The facility has
helped set up IPM programs in 12 African and several Latin American
countries during its three years of existence. In many countries,
IPM programs were broadened in scope to become Integrated Production
and Pest Management (IPPM) programs, in recognition of the link
between growing a healthy crop and managing pests effectively. The
change also reflected the need to make training more relevant to
farmers by addressing a wider range of crop management issues. In
addition to helping develop capacity to conduct farmer field schools,
the Facility also encourages, supports and coordinates policy research.
Topics include trends in pesticide use, and development of broader
IPM programs that include labeling, marketing and working with food
suppliers, who can give farmers incentives to produce foods that
do not have excessive pesticide residues.3
The Facility has focused
much of its efforts on strengthening national IPM programs and promoting
regional cooperation. In Ghana, for example, the Facility supported
the national government in developing a strong IPM program that
now serves as a resource for other African countries. IPM farmer
field schools were introduced in Ghana through an FAO-funded pilot
project from 1995 to 1996. Extension staff from the Ministry of
Food and Agriculture was trained in participatory IPM, and conducted
three farmer field schools. Cost comparisons showed net returns
from the IPM plots that were 32% higher than those treated with
conventional agrochemicals, convincing government authorities to
scale up the IPM program. The government established a national
IPM steering committee chaired by a Deputy Minister of Food and
Agriculture, and a National IPM Coordinator. Ghana obtained additional
funding from the UN Development Programme for a three-year project
to train 1,400 farmers per year in IPM for rice and to develop a
farmer field school program for IPM in tomatoes and cabbage.
High-level support for the
program and success in the field has led to a recent decision that
farmer field school training methodology should be adopted as the
norm in national extension system. To date, highly trained extension
agents have mobilized over 2,400 farmers in the ecologically sound
production of rice, cassava, vegetables and plantain, and there
are IPM trainers in every region of the country. The services of
these trainers are in demand by countries such as Malawi, Tanzania,
Benin and Senegal.4
Linking the World Bank
to IPM Expertise
The World Bank could be
doing more to support national IPM initiatives and policies that
emerge from the work of the FAO Community IPM Programme and the
Global IPM Facility. The Facility is actually co-sponsored by the
World Bank, along with the FAO, UN Development Programme and UN
Environment Programme. So far, however, the World Bank has made
limited use of opportunities to promote IPM that the Facility has
made available.
The Bank currently funds
an expert from the Facility to serve as Pesticide and Pest Management
Specialist at World Bank headquarters, providing guidance to World
Bank staff on how to comply with the Bank's pest management policy.
The expert's job is to train Bank staff on pest and pesticide management,
review procurement and use of pesticides in Bank-financed projects,
and assist staff in dealing with IPM and pesticide issues in specific
projects.5 In addition, the Facility has supported several
Bank projects with assistance in drawing up pest management plans.
Since the revision of the safeguard policy on pest management at
the end of 1998, attention paid to IPM and pest management seems
to have increased in the Bank.
World Bank projects could
also benefit from better interaction with the FAO Community IPM
Programme. In China, for example, a Bank-financed project in Sichuan
Province is promoting food and tree crop production, but does not
yet include farmer-led training in ecologically based pest management.
PANNA has been working to encourage collaboration between Bank staff
and local government officials who have conducted FAO-supported
IPM farmer field schools in Sichuan for over a decade. So far, the
responsiveness of the task manager concerned has been encouraging.
In addition to tapping into
the FAO's and the Facility's technical expertise and networks, the
World Bank would do well to learn some more fundamental lessons
from these agencies about how to reduce reliance on pesticides.
The first lesson is that lasting pesticide reduction comes from
empowering farmers to make their own pest management decisions based
on agro-ecological and financial analysis. The second is that private
sector partnerships with pesticide companies are unlikely to lead
to reduced use, or even safer use, of pesticides. Years of experience
in the field have taught FAO, Facility staff and other IPM practitioners
that so-called "safe use" pesticide training is often used as a
marketing tool for pesticides and tends to result in high levels
of pesticide use. In addition, most safety measures are impractical
in the context of farming in developing countries. Instead, partnerships
with food and commodity producers, processors and retailers with
an interest in reducing pesticide residues are far more likely to
lead to sustainable production.
Jessica Hamburger is
Project Coordinator at PAN North America.
Notes
1. Food and Agriculture
Organization's Community IPM Programme Web site, http://www.communityipm.org.
2. Ibid.
3. Draft Minutes, Second
Governing Group Meeting, Global IPM Facility, Kakamega, Western
Kenya, 4-6 October 2000.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
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