Food for All - Agri-culture: Reconnecting People, Land and Nature - page 93

been remarkable, and farmer field schools are now being deployed in many
parts of the world. Agriculturalists now believe that irrigated rice can, for
most of the time, be grown without pesticides, provided the biodiversity
is present.
Many countries are now reporting large reductions in pesticide use. In
Vietnam, 2 million farmers have cut pesticide use from more than three
sprays to one per season; in Sri Lanka, 55,000 farmers have reduced use
from three to one half sprays per season; and in Indonesia, 1 million
farmers have cut use from three sprays to one per season. In no case has
reduced pesticide use led to lower rice yields. 24 Amongst these are reports
that many farmers are now able to grow rice entirely without pesticides:
one quarter of field-school trained farmers in Indonesia, one fifth to one
third in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam, and three-quarters in parts of the
Philippines.
The key to success is biological diversity on farms. Pests and diseases
like monocultures and monoscapes because there is an abundance of food
and no natural enemies to check their growth. In the end, they have no
fear of pesticides, as resistance inevitably develops within populations and
spreads rapidly unless farmers are able to keep using new products.
Moreover, when a harmful element is removed from an agricultural
system, and biodiversity is managed to provide free pest-management
services, then further options for redesign are possible. Traditionally, rice
paddies were important sources of fish protein, and fish living in fields
helped in nutrient cycling and pest control. But pesticides are toxic to fish,
and their increased use since the 1960s entirely eliminated beneficial fish
from paddies. Take the pesticides away, though, and the fish can be
reintroduced.
In Bangladesh, a combined aquaculture and integrated pest manage-
ment programme is being implemented by CARE with the support of
the UK government and the European Union. 25 Six thousand farmer field
schools have been completed, with 150,000 farmers adopting more
sustainable rice production on about 50,000 hectares. The programmes
also emphasize fish cultivation in paddy fields and vegetable cultivation
on rice field dykes. Rice yields have improved by about 5-7 per cent, and
costs of production have fallen owing to reduced pesticide use. Each
hectare of paddy, though, yields up to 750 kilogrammes of fish, an
extraordinary increase in total system productivity for poor farmers with
very few resources. Farmers themselves recognize the changes in farm
biodiversity. One said to Tim Robertson, former leader of the programme:
'Our fields are singing again, after 30 years of silence.' It is the frogs singing in
diverse and healthy fields that are full of fish and rice. Arif Rashid of
CARE estimates that 85,000 farmers have stopped using insecticides; but