Increasing the environmental and social sustainability of cotton farming through farmer education in Andhra Pradesh, India

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Abstract

Integrated pest management (IPM) has been introduced in India to reduce the serious impact of the use of highly toxic pesticides on people’s health and the environment. However, IPM diffusion has been slow, in part because of the inherent complexity of the approach based on decisions requiring knowledge of ecological principles and local ecological dynamics. Farmer field schools (FFSs) on IPM, conducted for cotton growers in Andhra Pradesh, India, is shown to be an effective educational approach for building the essential knowledge and decision-making skills among farmers for IPM adoption. FFS farmers (73) drastically reduced the use of highly toxic pesticides as a result of increased knowledge on biological control principles. Yield levels were not affected by this reduction, showing that part of the current use of pesticides in cotton cultivation is superfluous. IPM labour demand has been suggested also as limiting IPM diffusion. However, an analysis of the physical labour use, carried out on a sub-sample (43 FFS and 52 control farms), showed that the adoption of IPM in the studied farms did not lead to an increase in the overall physical labour requirement, nor in the total time spent on plant protection.

Introduction

The global use of synthetic pesticides at the beginning of the current millennium exceeded 2.5 million tons per year. World pesticide expenditures were around $32.0 billion (EPA, 2002). The negative consequences on human health, water quality, biodiversity and wild life associated with the release of large quantities of toxic products into the environment increasingly has become a matter of concern (Harper and Zilberman, 1989, Agne et al., 1995).

Cotton cultivation is estimated to receive some 10% of all synthetic pesticides and 20–25% of insecticides applied world-wide each year. Developing countries use approximately 50% of the total (EPA, 2002). India is the third largest cotton producing country in the world; the area under cotton fluctuates between 8 and 9 million ha. Cotton cultivation generates extra cash for family expenses to millions of small-scale farmers. The cotton chain, including processing and textile industries, provides employment to even a larger population of low-salary factory workers, many of them women. Promotion of the industry is an important part of the national strategy for reducing rural poverty. However, the average cotton yields, constrained primarily by water availability and pest attacks, are among the lowest in the world (429 kg/ha, ICAC, 2005).

Pest control in cotton in India largely relies on pyrethroids, highly toxic organophosphate pesticides, and some very persistent organochlorine pesticides such as endosulfan (Kooistra et al., 2006). Repeated and improper applications of insecticides have caused the development of cotton pest resistance and the resurgence of pest outbreaks (Kranthi et al., 2002). Farmers have responded with higher doses of chemicals, which have led to ever higher costs of cultivation.

In 1981, the Government of India addressed the aforesaid problems by promoting the adoption of an integrated approach to plant protection that combines biological, cultural and chemical control, namely integrated pest management (IPM) (Hall and Duncan, 1984, USDA, 1993). However, until 1994 no significant, large-scale changes in the management of cotton-based farming systems were observed (Directorate of Plant Protection, 2003). This was because an inherently difficult and labour-intensive method such as IPM (Fernandez-Cornejo, 1998), was disseminated without an adequate investment in farmer education. The dissemination of IPM was based on short field demonstrations of standard technical packages developed in research stations. However, IPM efficiency depends largely on timely management decisions taken on the basis of actual field situations. Unlike traditional chemical control, IPM requires that farmers have in-depth ecological knowledge, analytical ability and practical experience. The farmer field school (FFS) approach was introduced by the Government to address this deficiency. FFSs are season-long educational courses organised in the field for small (25–30) groups of farmers (Kenmore, 1996). The FFSs provide farmers with opportunities to experiment with IPM principles and find locally-relevant pest management solutions. In FFSs, farmers study insect ecology by observing the predatory behaviours of specimens collected from their own fields and reared in insect zoos. Additionally, they collect data on pest and predator abundance in their fields, data that are then analysed in groups, who are encouraged to take informed decisions on plant protection based on the analysis’ results. This process of building farmers’ knowledge and confidence in IPM, as compared to the previous top-down delivery of technical recommendations, is expected to be more effective in supporting the uptake of ecologically-informed farming practices (Bingen, 2004). The curriculum of the FFSs conducted in Andhra Pradesh also covered topics on production practices to enhance plant health and crop productivity, such as optimising doses and application of synthetic fertilisers, water use, and the number of weeding operations.

Up to now, there are no agreed universal standards or indicators to quantify IPM FFS impacts (Van den Berg and Jiggins, 2007), and because IPM practices vary by farming system and context, cross-case comparison between situations or between approaches is both difficult and contentious. In the specific case of this study, farmers who have made a transition towards low pesticide cotton farming as a result of an increase in their ecological knowledge and a more analytical decision-making process are considered IPM practitioners. In terms of labour, cotton is already one of the most intensive crops in India; its labour requirement ranges between 190 and 225 working days/ha (PRDIS, 2003), compared to 29–84 days/ha for maize (Joshi et al., 2005) and 195 days/ha for rice (FAO, 2002). Fernandez-Cornejo (1998) pointed out that labour availability has positive effects on the adoption rate of IPM and the first empirical results of this effect were presented by Beckmann et al. (2005). Therefore, it is important to understand if farms previously using conventional synthetic chemical pest control increase their physical labour requirement when converting to IPM. Evaluation of the changes induced by the introduction of a new system management is needed also to understand the associated social implications. Such changes often are gender differentiated, particularly in countries like India where a sharp gender division of roles is common. For instance, the introduction in 1961 of high-yielding varieties and hybrids has increased women’s labour share in agriculture as a result of the significant technical changes entailed (Bennet, 1992), particularly in areas where cash crops are grown (Duvvury, 1989).

In order to test if developing farmers’ human capital is an effective way to improve the uptake of IPM in cotton, this paper presents an assessment of the changes in agronomic practices, input use (fertiliser, pesticides and physical labour) and yield levels of farmers trained in FFSs. The labour analysis was carried out on gender-disaggregated data to address the gender effects associated with the adoption of IPM. The study also establishes the relation between pesticide use, farmer knowledge on insect ecology, and farmers’ decision-making criteria with respect to pesticide application. The study formed part of a larger Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) effort (2003–2005), conducted in the same geographical districts, that assessed the impacts of FFSs on the environment (Kooistra, unpublished), farmers’ health (Mancini et al., 2005), and the social capital of farmers (Mancini et al., 2007).

Section snippets

Study area and sampling

Around 10% of the national acreage under cotton is grown in Andhra Pradesh (AP) with an average yield of 483 kg/ha (1994–2003 average, CAB, 2005, ICAC, 2005). The study was conducted in two districts of AP: Warangal district (IPM1 and C1 villages) and Mahaboobnagar district (IPM2, IPM3, and C2 villages). Cotton was grown as the main crop during the rainy season on 121,260 ha and 22,697 ha, respectively.

In 2002/2003, season-long (July–January) FFSs on cotton IPM were organised in the study

Data analysis

The study compared the pre/post changes of the treatment (FFS) group to the pre/post changes of the control group. The design, called the Double Difference (DD) model, has been proposed as necessary to address the bias introduced by a non-random farmer sampling procedure, inherent to FFS evaluation studies because of the purposeful way in which recruitment to a FFS is carried out (Feder et al., 2004a). As the descriptive statistics have shown, even though no specific criteria were used to

Analysis of changes in agronomic practices, input use and farmers’ attitude towards pest management

FFS respondents were significantly (4.8 y; P < 0.05) younger than control farmers and more educated (more people had completed primary school; P < 0.01). There were no significant differences in terms of average farm size (2.7 and 3.2 ha for IPM and control farmers, respectively) and area under cotton cultivation (1.2 and 1.3 ha for IPM and control farmers, respectively) (Table 1).

Early in the season, prior to any FFS training, farmers applied organophospates at low dosage against sucking pests,

Discussion

The study shows that the adoption of integrated pest management (IPM) can significantly reduce the use of pesticides on cotton in Andhra Pradesh. Given that farmers trained in IPM through FFS used one sixth of the pesticides used by the control group to obtain the same yield levels, it can also be concluded that the scope for reduction is extremely large. However, this reduction was possible because of the knowledge-intensive, skills-oriented and hands-on educational approach adopted to train

Conclusions

This study shows that the conventional pesticide practices in cotton in India are unnecessary and that IPM practices can be adopted without sacrificing yield. Considering the well-established impacts of pesticides on the environment and people’s health, there is a need to support the government’s policy to promote the use of ecologically-informed control methods such as IPM. We showed that farmer field schools are an effective way of assisting farmers to develop the skills and understanding

Acknowledgements

The financial support provided by the EU-FAO IPM Programme for Cotton in Asia and the constant technical guidance provided by P. Kenmore, P. Ooi, G. Walter-Echols, D. von Werner, P. Pachagounder and the local staff during the fieldwork are gratefully acknowledged. We are grateful to Justus Wesseler for his valuable advice on the labour analysis. Special thanks are due to the farmers who collaborated in this survey for letting the first author to visit their farms and dedicating their valuable

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