Stopping Subsidies for Pesticides in Indonesian Rice ... - P2 InfoHouse
71-74 SDI2/26 mk2
13/6/00
9:55 am
Page 71
Stopping Subsidies for Pesticides in Indonesian Rice Production KEVIN D. GALLAGHER, Food and Agriculture Organization, Rome, Italy
ABSTRACT
T R
his is an account of how a very small insect less than the size of a rice grain, known as the rice brown planthopper or BPH for short, has taught a lot of people about the balance of nature in Asian rice fields.
ice has been planted in Indonesia for many more generations than anyone can possibly remember. There are many names for rice in every local language, including names for each of its stages of growth - the rice seedling, the growing rice plant, the mature rice grain, the un-dried grain, the dried grain, the un-hulled grain, the hulled grain, and cooked grain. And of course cooked rice also has different names depending on how it is cooked. Rice is eaten three times a day by perhaps more than half the world’s population. Rice production is so old and so central to most Asian cultures that there are numerous deities to care for the rice crop. et this small insect that is native to all the rice of south-east, north-east and south Asia was not known to most people until the beginning of the Green Revolution when it suddenly became a pest. A major international book on Asian rice pests published in the early ‘60s doesn’t even have its picture. How does an insect that has been an insignificant part of the rice ecosystem forever suddenly become one of the most threatening pests of rice production - as BPH did several times?
Y
BUYI NG A PROBLEM Indonesia began the BIMAS rice intensification programme in 1968 and since then there have been great increases in their total yields and overall production overall an increase of more than three times. Most of this was due to better irrigation, shorter duration varieties and credit support for purchasing chemical fertiliser. Along with intensification were subsidies for certain inputs such as fertilisers and pesticides. The general belief in the 1960s was that more agrochemical inputs - both fertiliser and pesticides - meant higher yields and production. The government had funds from oil and was able to spend large sums of money on these inputs. In the year between 1976 and 1980 the subsidies for pesticides were over US$ 50 million per year and between 1981 and 1988 they exceeded US$ 150 million per year. During the time of intensification, the BPH had several spectacular outbreaks. 1976 and 1977 saw almost one million hectares of rice turn an unwelcome brown, called ‘hopper burn’ due to massive numbers of BPH developing on the rice crop. As the BPH sucks the sap from the stem, it appears that the vascular bundles carrying unwanted wastes away from the leaves are blocked. Eventually toxic compounds build up in the leaf causing it to burn from the inside out. Needless to say - there is no harvest. But the hopper burn happens late, after all the labour and material inputs have been paid
for by farmers - so losses are fantastic. All the inputs, all the labour and potential harvest valued at US$500 per hectare over a million hectares were lost. The human suffering of those families - usually whole villages - was a political disaster. And what would you
Figure 1 A wolf spider, one of the most beneficial predators of BHP. It arrives early in the season, feeds on small flies, and will have built up its numbers by the time most BHP immigrate into the rice fields (photo:IRRI)
S U S TA I N A B L E D E V E L O P M E N T I N T E R N AT I O N A L
71
71-74 SDI2/26 mk2
13/6/00
9:55 am
Page 72
think if you were a farmer depending on your hectare of rice harvest for your children’s school fees, extra food, and inputs for the next season - and all you had done is follow the government’s recommendations prepared by senior scientists with support from the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI)?
E C O L O G I C A L LY, WHAT WAS GO ING ON ?
Figure 2 (above) The carabid beetle is also a fierce predator (though sometimes seen by untrained staff and farmers as a pest, which may motivate spraying) (photo: P. Ooi) Figure 3 (right) Hopper burnt rice plant with massive population of BHP seen during a crisis outbreak
Figure 4 Sprayed fields are hopper burnt while the unsprayed field is a healthy green
Unfortunately, there were few ecologists in rice research in the 70s. (There still aren’t many ecologists in the research stations - but that’s another story without a happy ending.) Fortunately, starting in 1977, Peter Kenmore, a young student from the University of California Berkeley, supported by a Rockefeller grant, began to look into the ecology of BPH while at IRRI in the Philippines. He knew that in fact there are many insect pests of crop plants that increase when more pesticide is used. Mites, scales, whiteflies, some caterpillars, and a few other kinds of insects are well known for destroying whole industries when the wrong pesticides are used at the wrong times. In all ecosystems, there are natural mortality factors (things that kill naturally) that keep most pests at low numbers. Kenmore found (actually found again, since some other researchers found the same thing in Japan 15 years before - but that is why it is called re-search maybe?) that in the rice system, there are spiders (at least 100 species), water striders, dragonfly and damselfly nymphs, ladybeetle larvae and adults (yes, it is true that some ladybeetles are heterosexual males), many kinds of other beetles, as well as entomophagous parasitoids that destroy eggs, nymphs and adults, that will hunt down or wait for rice herbivores. BPH in a system like this survives but never reaches high populations. When pesticides are applied, these beneficial predators and parasitoids are destroyed, so immigrating pests can reproduce and survive without any mortality (and spectacularly - at least for an entomologist - explode their populations). For BPH it is even more interesting - they don’t have to migrate back into the field. The eggs of BPH are embedded in the stem of the rice, so they are protected from the insecticides - they just hatch into an environment where there are no predators to eat them and they rapidly develop immense populations. It seems simple, but it is not readily apparent to a non-ecologist at first. This problem provided data for many Ph.D. dissertations. One Indonesian farmer after seeing the system in his own field eloquently summarised the ecological mechanism, saying, “God provided an army, navy and airforce to protect His rice, and we have destroyed them, only to let the enemy march in.”
THE FINAL EPISODE Unfortunately not many people paid much attention to Dr. Kenmore’s results - not even at IRRI. Whenever BPH flared up in a country, new rice varieties resistant (for the moment) to BPH were released by the government in collaboration with IRRI (varieties are one of its main products). These new varieties were not as good tasting or good cooking as previous varieties, but they momentarily solved the BPH problem and everyone could continue on with business as usual - subsidising pesticides and ignoring ecosystem management. Resistance, however, doesn’t last, because BPH evolve. Just as bacteria evolve to overcome the latest antibiotic, so do BPH overcome the latest rice variety. In fact in about 10 months, any population of BPH can overcome any varietal resistance (that was the topic of my dissertation
72 S U S TA I N A B L E D E V E L O P M E N T I N T E R N AT I O N A L
71-74 SDI2/26 mk2
13/6/00
9:55 am
Page 73
- BPH is such a lovely little friend to doctoral students). Outbreaks of BPH continued to occur at regular intervals, called ‘boom and bust’ by breeders since the variety does well for a while but eventually loses resistance. In 1985, however, BPH started flaring up again. This time, however, there was a good ecologist in the Ministry of Finance who found out about natural mortality factors and figured out that the Ministry was spending millions to create a problem that caused millions more in losses. He alerted the Minister, who alerted the then President Suharto. Fortunately there was a good body of national research results performed by Dr. I. N. Oka and Dr. Kasumbogo Untung that validated the studies of Kenmore. Furthermore there was a Japanese team in the country with an expert, Dr. K. Sogawa, famous for his studies on BPH evolution. And there was an ecologist at IRRI (well, just for a short time) who spoke about natural enemies of BPH. The voices were heard and the ecosystem understood. A Presidential Instruction No. 3/1987 had already been developed by the government and these inputs provided a scientific basis to move ahead. The InPres 3/87 banned 57 pesticide products that were causing problems in rice ecosystems, and there was an instruction to develop mass training on better management of pests for government staff and farmers through an integrated pest management programme. The Ministry of Finance also decided to remove ridiculous pesticide subsidies, thereby saving the country millions of dollars in direct costs.
DID IT WORK? A National IPM Programme was established by the Indonesian government with the collaboration of the FAOled Inter-Country Programme for Rice IPM under the same Peter Kenmore who had years earlier figured out what the problem was. A massive training scheme under the direction of the National Planning Board and support from an FAO team under Dr. Russ Dilts was implemented. This led to a hands-on practical ecosystemlevel educational process called IPM Farmer Field Schools. Under this scheme more than 15,000 trainers and 1,000,000 farmers have been trained in Indonesia for better production and pest management of the rice crop. Since the elimination of subsidies, pesticides have become more expensive and thus are used less. Where the ban is followed, no outbreaks have been found. The training of government staff has led to less pressure to use pesticides in rice. Farmers themselves have been successful at continuing to increase yields without resorting to increased pesticide use. Overall production has continued to climb, although El Niño and smoke from extensive fires have had an impact in some years. So yes, the approach works. Well, sort of.
by practically all intensified rice farmers produces only about 1 to 2 tons per hectare. Of present yields of 5 to 7 tons per hectare, at least 4 or more tons are due only to the fertiliser inputs. In other words, 80% of rice production is dependent on fossil-fuel produced fertilisers. In some countries like Korea and Japan the percentage is more - and basically means that they are extremely distant from their goal for self-sufficiency in rice since all of the fertiliser is imported. So while pest ecosystem management is leading to a more sustainable situation, the rice production system overall is sliding deeper into an abyss of fertiliser dependency that is not sustainable.
Figure 5 Farmers study practical ecological skills to improve their pest management
F U RTHER R EA DIN G 1. Kenmore, P. E.. 1996. Integrated Pest Management Rice Case Study. In: Persley G. J. (ed.) Integrated Pest Management and Biotechnology, Proc. Conf. in Bellagio. 2. Ministry of Agriculture, Republic of Indonesia. 1996. The Success of Rice Self-Sufficiency Programme. World Food Summit, FAO. 3. Oka, I.N. 1996. The Indonesian Integrated Food Crops Pest Management Programme: A Successful Campaign Due to Cultural and Educational Participation by
Figure 6 Pesticide subsidies increased in line with rice production, but when subsidies and pesticide use declined, production continued to increase because of fertiliser input and better crop management
W H AT ELSE? Certain companies see rice farmers as a good market for their pesticide products. These companies continue advertisements and corrupt practices to entice a return to the old days when their products were widely used. Despite calls by many international organisations, even including the Global Crop Protection Federation, for IPM implementation, local pesticide company sales staff have targets to meet, commissions to earn and products to push. There is much pre s s u re at all levels for increasing pesticide use. In a broader sense, there are other problems for sustainable agriculture. Rice without the chemical fertilisers used
S U S TA I N A B L E D E V E L O P M E N T I N T E R N AT I O N A L
73
71-74 SDI2/26 mk2
13/6/00
9:55 am
Page 74
Farmers. Presented at the Symposium of the Annual Meeting of Swiss Academy of Sciences on Global Change, Zurich, October 9-10, 1996. 4. Ooi, P.A.C. 1996. Experiences in Educating Rice Farmers to Understand Biological Control. Entomophaga 41:37585. 5. Soejitno, J., 1999. Integrated Pest Management in Rice in Indonesia: A Success Story. APARI, FAO Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific, Bangkok. 57 pp.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Dr. KEVIN GALLAGHER currently works with the Global IPM Facility hosted in FAO, Rome. He is an entomologist/ecologist and assisted in the establishment of the Indonesian National IPM Programme in 1988. Since then, he has worked with national IPM programmes and NGOs in about 30 countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the USA (California) to bring better ecological science to farmers through field education activities.
74 S U S TA I N A B L E D E V E L O P M E N T I N T E R N AT I O N A L
I F Y O U H AV E A N Y E N Q U I R I E S R E G A R D I N G T H E C O N T E N T O F T H I S A RT I C L E , P L E A S E C O N TA C T: Dr. Kevin D. Gallagher FAO, AGP-B752 Viale delle Terme di Caracalla 00100 Rome Italy Tel: +39 06 5705 6269 Fax: +39 06 5705 6227 E-mail: [email protected]
13/6/00
9:55 am
Page 71
Stopping Subsidies for Pesticides in Indonesian Rice Production KEVIN D. GALLAGHER, Food and Agriculture Organization, Rome, Italy
ABSTRACT
T R
his is an account of how a very small insect less than the size of a rice grain, known as the rice brown planthopper or BPH for short, has taught a lot of people about the balance of nature in Asian rice fields.
ice has been planted in Indonesia for many more generations than anyone can possibly remember. There are many names for rice in every local language, including names for each of its stages of growth - the rice seedling, the growing rice plant, the mature rice grain, the un-dried grain, the dried grain, the un-hulled grain, the hulled grain, and cooked grain. And of course cooked rice also has different names depending on how it is cooked. Rice is eaten three times a day by perhaps more than half the world’s population. Rice production is so old and so central to most Asian cultures that there are numerous deities to care for the rice crop. et this small insect that is native to all the rice of south-east, north-east and south Asia was not known to most people until the beginning of the Green Revolution when it suddenly became a pest. A major international book on Asian rice pests published in the early ‘60s doesn’t even have its picture. How does an insect that has been an insignificant part of the rice ecosystem forever suddenly become one of the most threatening pests of rice production - as BPH did several times?
Y
BUYI NG A PROBLEM Indonesia began the BIMAS rice intensification programme in 1968 and since then there have been great increases in their total yields and overall production overall an increase of more than three times. Most of this was due to better irrigation, shorter duration varieties and credit support for purchasing chemical fertiliser. Along with intensification were subsidies for certain inputs such as fertilisers and pesticides. The general belief in the 1960s was that more agrochemical inputs - both fertiliser and pesticides - meant higher yields and production. The government had funds from oil and was able to spend large sums of money on these inputs. In the year between 1976 and 1980 the subsidies for pesticides were over US$ 50 million per year and between 1981 and 1988 they exceeded US$ 150 million per year. During the time of intensification, the BPH had several spectacular outbreaks. 1976 and 1977 saw almost one million hectares of rice turn an unwelcome brown, called ‘hopper burn’ due to massive numbers of BPH developing on the rice crop. As the BPH sucks the sap from the stem, it appears that the vascular bundles carrying unwanted wastes away from the leaves are blocked. Eventually toxic compounds build up in the leaf causing it to burn from the inside out. Needless to say - there is no harvest. But the hopper burn happens late, after all the labour and material inputs have been paid
for by farmers - so losses are fantastic. All the inputs, all the labour and potential harvest valued at US$500 per hectare over a million hectares were lost. The human suffering of those families - usually whole villages - was a political disaster. And what would you
Figure 1 A wolf spider, one of the most beneficial predators of BHP. It arrives early in the season, feeds on small flies, and will have built up its numbers by the time most BHP immigrate into the rice fields (photo:IRRI)
S U S TA I N A B L E D E V E L O P M E N T I N T E R N AT I O N A L
71
71-74 SDI2/26 mk2
13/6/00
9:55 am
Page 72
think if you were a farmer depending on your hectare of rice harvest for your children’s school fees, extra food, and inputs for the next season - and all you had done is follow the government’s recommendations prepared by senior scientists with support from the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI)?
E C O L O G I C A L LY, WHAT WAS GO ING ON ?
Figure 2 (above) The carabid beetle is also a fierce predator (though sometimes seen by untrained staff and farmers as a pest, which may motivate spraying) (photo: P. Ooi) Figure 3 (right) Hopper burnt rice plant with massive population of BHP seen during a crisis outbreak
Figure 4 Sprayed fields are hopper burnt while the unsprayed field is a healthy green
Unfortunately, there were few ecologists in rice research in the 70s. (There still aren’t many ecologists in the research stations - but that’s another story without a happy ending.) Fortunately, starting in 1977, Peter Kenmore, a young student from the University of California Berkeley, supported by a Rockefeller grant, began to look into the ecology of BPH while at IRRI in the Philippines. He knew that in fact there are many insect pests of crop plants that increase when more pesticide is used. Mites, scales, whiteflies, some caterpillars, and a few other kinds of insects are well known for destroying whole industries when the wrong pesticides are used at the wrong times. In all ecosystems, there are natural mortality factors (things that kill naturally) that keep most pests at low numbers. Kenmore found (actually found again, since some other researchers found the same thing in Japan 15 years before - but that is why it is called re-search maybe?) that in the rice system, there are spiders (at least 100 species), water striders, dragonfly and damselfly nymphs, ladybeetle larvae and adults (yes, it is true that some ladybeetles are heterosexual males), many kinds of other beetles, as well as entomophagous parasitoids that destroy eggs, nymphs and adults, that will hunt down or wait for rice herbivores. BPH in a system like this survives but never reaches high populations. When pesticides are applied, these beneficial predators and parasitoids are destroyed, so immigrating pests can reproduce and survive without any mortality (and spectacularly - at least for an entomologist - explode their populations). For BPH it is even more interesting - they don’t have to migrate back into the field. The eggs of BPH are embedded in the stem of the rice, so they are protected from the insecticides - they just hatch into an environment where there are no predators to eat them and they rapidly develop immense populations. It seems simple, but it is not readily apparent to a non-ecologist at first. This problem provided data for many Ph.D. dissertations. One Indonesian farmer after seeing the system in his own field eloquently summarised the ecological mechanism, saying, “God provided an army, navy and airforce to protect His rice, and we have destroyed them, only to let the enemy march in.”
THE FINAL EPISODE Unfortunately not many people paid much attention to Dr. Kenmore’s results - not even at IRRI. Whenever BPH flared up in a country, new rice varieties resistant (for the moment) to BPH were released by the government in collaboration with IRRI (varieties are one of its main products). These new varieties were not as good tasting or good cooking as previous varieties, but they momentarily solved the BPH problem and everyone could continue on with business as usual - subsidising pesticides and ignoring ecosystem management. Resistance, however, doesn’t last, because BPH evolve. Just as bacteria evolve to overcome the latest antibiotic, so do BPH overcome the latest rice variety. In fact in about 10 months, any population of BPH can overcome any varietal resistance (that was the topic of my dissertation
72 S U S TA I N A B L E D E V E L O P M E N T I N T E R N AT I O N A L
71-74 SDI2/26 mk2
13/6/00
9:55 am
Page 73
- BPH is such a lovely little friend to doctoral students). Outbreaks of BPH continued to occur at regular intervals, called ‘boom and bust’ by breeders since the variety does well for a while but eventually loses resistance. In 1985, however, BPH started flaring up again. This time, however, there was a good ecologist in the Ministry of Finance who found out about natural mortality factors and figured out that the Ministry was spending millions to create a problem that caused millions more in losses. He alerted the Minister, who alerted the then President Suharto. Fortunately there was a good body of national research results performed by Dr. I. N. Oka and Dr. Kasumbogo Untung that validated the studies of Kenmore. Furthermore there was a Japanese team in the country with an expert, Dr. K. Sogawa, famous for his studies on BPH evolution. And there was an ecologist at IRRI (well, just for a short time) who spoke about natural enemies of BPH. The voices were heard and the ecosystem understood. A Presidential Instruction No. 3/1987 had already been developed by the government and these inputs provided a scientific basis to move ahead. The InPres 3/87 banned 57 pesticide products that were causing problems in rice ecosystems, and there was an instruction to develop mass training on better management of pests for government staff and farmers through an integrated pest management programme. The Ministry of Finance also decided to remove ridiculous pesticide subsidies, thereby saving the country millions of dollars in direct costs.
DID IT WORK? A National IPM Programme was established by the Indonesian government with the collaboration of the FAOled Inter-Country Programme for Rice IPM under the same Peter Kenmore who had years earlier figured out what the problem was. A massive training scheme under the direction of the National Planning Board and support from an FAO team under Dr. Russ Dilts was implemented. This led to a hands-on practical ecosystemlevel educational process called IPM Farmer Field Schools. Under this scheme more than 15,000 trainers and 1,000,000 farmers have been trained in Indonesia for better production and pest management of the rice crop. Since the elimination of subsidies, pesticides have become more expensive and thus are used less. Where the ban is followed, no outbreaks have been found. The training of government staff has led to less pressure to use pesticides in rice. Farmers themselves have been successful at continuing to increase yields without resorting to increased pesticide use. Overall production has continued to climb, although El Niño and smoke from extensive fires have had an impact in some years. So yes, the approach works. Well, sort of.
by practically all intensified rice farmers produces only about 1 to 2 tons per hectare. Of present yields of 5 to 7 tons per hectare, at least 4 or more tons are due only to the fertiliser inputs. In other words, 80% of rice production is dependent on fossil-fuel produced fertilisers. In some countries like Korea and Japan the percentage is more - and basically means that they are extremely distant from their goal for self-sufficiency in rice since all of the fertiliser is imported. So while pest ecosystem management is leading to a more sustainable situation, the rice production system overall is sliding deeper into an abyss of fertiliser dependency that is not sustainable.
Figure 5 Farmers study practical ecological skills to improve their pest management
F U RTHER R EA DIN G 1. Kenmore, P. E.. 1996. Integrated Pest Management Rice Case Study. In: Persley G. J. (ed.) Integrated Pest Management and Biotechnology, Proc. Conf. in Bellagio. 2. Ministry of Agriculture, Republic of Indonesia. 1996. The Success of Rice Self-Sufficiency Programme. World Food Summit, FAO. 3. Oka, I.N. 1996. The Indonesian Integrated Food Crops Pest Management Programme: A Successful Campaign Due to Cultural and Educational Participation by
Figure 6 Pesticide subsidies increased in line with rice production, but when subsidies and pesticide use declined, production continued to increase because of fertiliser input and better crop management
W H AT ELSE? Certain companies see rice farmers as a good market for their pesticide products. These companies continue advertisements and corrupt practices to entice a return to the old days when their products were widely used. Despite calls by many international organisations, even including the Global Crop Protection Federation, for IPM implementation, local pesticide company sales staff have targets to meet, commissions to earn and products to push. There is much pre s s u re at all levels for increasing pesticide use. In a broader sense, there are other problems for sustainable agriculture. Rice without the chemical fertilisers used
S U S TA I N A B L E D E V E L O P M E N T I N T E R N AT I O N A L
73
71-74 SDI2/26 mk2
13/6/00
9:55 am
Page 74
Farmers. Presented at the Symposium of the Annual Meeting of Swiss Academy of Sciences on Global Change, Zurich, October 9-10, 1996. 4. Ooi, P.A.C. 1996. Experiences in Educating Rice Farmers to Understand Biological Control. Entomophaga 41:37585. 5. Soejitno, J., 1999. Integrated Pest Management in Rice in Indonesia: A Success Story. APARI, FAO Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific, Bangkok. 57 pp.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Dr. KEVIN GALLAGHER currently works with the Global IPM Facility hosted in FAO, Rome. He is an entomologist/ecologist and assisted in the establishment of the Indonesian National IPM Programme in 1988. Since then, he has worked with national IPM programmes and NGOs in about 30 countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the USA (California) to bring better ecological science to farmers through field education activities.
74 S U S TA I N A B L E D E V E L O P M E N T I N T E R N AT I O N A L
I F Y O U H AV E A N Y E N Q U I R I E S R E G A R D I N G T H E C O N T E N T O F T H I S A RT I C L E , P L E A S E C O N TA C T: Dr. Kevin D. Gallagher FAO, AGP-B752 Viale delle Terme di Caracalla 00100 Rome Italy Tel: +39 06 5705 6269 Fax: +39 06 5705 6227 E-mail: [email protected]
