Region:
Categorized: Cultural control and agro-ecology management
Tagged: #CIMMYT #fallarmyworm
Why farmers are reluctant to adopt cultural and other agro-ecological #fallarmyworm management practices? How extension workers and researchers support to promote these approaches?
There are certain reasons that farmers are reluctant to adopt cultural and other agro-ecological practices. They are: farmers want to immediate knockdown result, lack of knowledge on the benefit of agroecological pest management approaches, very few cultural practices are in hand, lack of farmers centred research, level of understanding on cultural and agroecological approaches is lacking, less priority by the local, federal, national and international policy, lack of coordination between research, extension and academia etc.
Hi Sundar, I’d add to your list of reasons that agro-ecological approaches often rely on monitoring – for example, the timing of some biological control options is crucial as they are most effective if the insect is infected in it’s early instars. Our experience even on large commercial farms is that there are digital options available for monitoring but they are expensive, even on large commercial farms. The human alternative is scouting (or ‘crop walking’ as the agronomists here in the UK call it). Ideally this would be combined with pheromone lures to assess the adult immigration. I would personally… Read more »
Great submissions, Sundar and Aislinn. To add to the above stated.., a larger number of farmers are the resource poor and sometimes haven’t acquired formal education. This creates a gab between channeling of information and absorption for implementation. There is the need that we critically observe these grabs and know how to channel information to a particular audience, in this case farmers. In some cases, farmers are not made to own or better said, feel like a part of an ongoing effort to manage the FAW pest problem. Paticipatory approach targeted at a specific audience or group might be very… Read more »
Samuel, Thanks. Farmer field school could be a good implementation pathway for technology dissemination.
Hi Aislinn, Thanks for the detail explanation. I totally agree because farmers want multiple and immediate benefits from their practice. You have given an excellent example of a push-pull strategy for fall armyworm management which is very popular in Kenya.