Title of document: Assessment of Rice IPM Practice and Inputs

Authors: Roy Bateman and Le Cao Luong

Journal’s name if any:

 Ministry/Government Agency/Organisation:  Farmers and Storekeepers in Dong Thap – A Province in the Mekong Delta Region of Viet Nam.

Year of publication: 2015

Geographic focus: National level

Main issues / topics addressed (for example: Action thresholds, Natural enemies and biological control agent, IPM strategy, crop protection product, spraying practice and application equipment…)

School of agroecology (if any):

Web address to original document (if any):

 Summary:

 1.       A greatly improved training infrastructure is needed on pesticide science as part of the integrated pest management (IPM) curriculum: for farmers, spray contractors, retailers and agricultural colleges.

Key weaknesses include the apparent confusion, by both store-keepers and farmers, about mode of action (MoA) with mode of dose transfer: in which case the prospects for effective IRM are fairly bleak. Products with questionable AI mixtures are a registration issue that should be addressed. Farmer ‘cocktails’ and late-season applications are also a significant problem.

A curriculum for responsible selection and use of crop protection products is given, covering important health-related and technical issues such as: MoA, resistance, resurgence, residues (the ‘three Rs’), the importance of pre-harvest intervals and rational application techniques.

2. Pesticide application: existing practices are unsafe and inefficient.

Most (>99 %) farmers and contractors walk into their own spray, with virtually all farmers relying on PPE as their ‘first line of defence’.

The design of spraying equipment contributes to very inefficient application. Engineering solutions might involve the introduction of tail-booms and specifying equipment capable of using international nozzles, which would both improve safety and save famers money: both for labour (work rate) and more efficient use of PPPs. Volume application rates in post-tillering rice average 400 L/ha, but it is technically feasible to reduce this substantially, with commensurate reduction of inputs: thus potentially making the work attractive to farmers and attainable within a medium-term project.

In the longer term, adoption of international (e.g. FAO, ISO) standards and higher-level training and research are needed in this area. We suggest the formation a national (or regional) pesticide application unit, possibly in the form of a University-based lab, be set-up to address these issues.

3. Only a small minority of farmers in Đồng Tháp even claim province practice IPM (84% reported that they do not) and most farmers evidently are spraying unnecessarily.

Most farmers spray their fields merely on incidence of pests, or preventatively. An especially common insect thus treated is the rice leaf-roller, Cnaphalocrocis medinalis, with a large number of products specifically registered for this ‘pest’. Similar levels of BPH were reported by farmers (92% in Winter-Spring, 84% in Summer-Autumn crop); rice blast is the principal disease and Echinochloa spp. are the most important weeds. We suggest that it time to seriously re-evaluate the role of action thresholds as part of a realistic IPM strategy for the main rice pests and introduce clear, simple guide-lines for farmers: agreed by major stake-holders and conforming to a code of practice.

Maintaining awareness of natural enemies is needed – especially for younger farmers in the post-1990s IPM-FFS generation, who are influenced by intensive advertising on the TV and elsewhere. However, a substantial minority (46%) are aware of natural enemies (NE) in their fields and a few farmers know about a wide range of NE. More than 80% of farmers claimed to use ‘selective pesticides’ (the question refers to all categories). However, biopesticides (if fermentation products are excluded) enjoy on a tiny proportion of the market: slow action and storage issues were frequently alluded-to as constraints, but as above, we discuss the need for realistic guide-lines for use and better training.