Ecological Basis for Low-Toxicity Integrated Pest Management 195enemies. If not swiftly and adequately managed, crop protection problems can
lead to serious cosmetic damage and total crop failure. Vegetable ecosystems are
much less stable compared with paddy rice ecosystems
Any rice FFS alumni farmer would be able to explain and demonstrate in their
field that there are several highly effective predators and/or parasitoids indigenously
available as integral components of a well-functioning rice ecosystem. As a result,
pest populations are well regulated and rarely reach critically damaging levels.
Management interventions are therefore rarely needed. In fact, human interven-
tion with applications of pesticides causes more problems than it solves. The basic
message that IPM Farmer Field Schools spread focuses on ensuring that farmers do
not intervene when pest problems occur, and rather let nature play out its well-
regulated population dynamic games. The IPM management strategy to be
employed in Asian rice production can thus be characterized with ‘informed non-
intervention’.
But the situation is very different in vegetable ecosystems in tropical Asia, as
these are designed to prevent and manage pest and disease problems from causing
serious crop loss. The crop protection strategy therefore employed in intensified
tropical vegetable production is based on informed (and proactive and preventive)
intervention (Whitten and Ketelaar, 2003).
Making Vegetable IPM Work: The Need for Farmers to
Become IPM Experts
With the urgent need to address problems associated with the indiscriminate use
of pesticides, the FAO Inter-Country Programme for Vegetable IPM in South and
South-East Asia has carried out applied research, extension and farmer education
activities to promote and support IPM in vegetables. Based on impact assessment
of farmer training work conducted by this FAO Programme and its associated
National IPM Programmes in a variety of crops in several Asian countries, IPM
trained vegetable farmers can now avoid excessive and inappropriate use of pesti-
cides (Larsen, 2001; Lim and Ooi, 2003).
Farmers who undergo season-long discovery-based training in Farmer Field
Schools become ecologically literate, and so can understand much better how eco-
systems function and what is the likely impact of their management decisions. By
being better able to identify field problems and assess their potential impact on
yields, farmers can considerably reduce the use of pesticides in vegetable produc-
tion and limit any remaining applications to those situations where human inter-
vention is necessary. As a result of FFS training, farmers can also make better
decisions on which pesticides to purchase, how and when to apply them, and how
to avoid cocktail formulations.
These IPM trained farmers are then better placed to access new information and
to adapt and adopt novel options that reduce further dependency on pesticides. The