IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/agrhuv/v24y2007i3p307-321.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Local agro-ecological knowledge and its relationship to farmers’ pest management decision making in rural Honduras

Author

Listed:
  • Kris Wyckhuys
  • Robert O’Neil

Abstract

Integrated pest management (IPM) has been widely promoted in the developing world, but in many regions its adoption rates have been variable. Experience has shown that to ensure IPM adoption, the complexities of local agro-production systems and context-specific folk knowledge need to be appreciated. Our research explored the linkages between farmer knowledge, pest management decision making, and ecological attributes of subsistence maize agriculture. We report a case study from four rural communities in the highlands of southeast Honduras. Communities were typified by their agro-environments, IPM training history, and levels of infestation by a key maize pest, the fall armyworm (Spodoptera frugiperda Smith). Although variable, infestation levels generally did not justify pest management intervention. Consequently, crop losses from this pest were considered of low importance and most farmers proceeded in a rational fashion by refraining from action in their fields. Farmers attributed the low degree of pest infestation predominantly to abiotic causal factors (rainfall, temperature). The role of natural enemies in controlling this pest (i.e., biological control) was deemed of low importance by farmers; nevertheless, a broad array of such organisms was mentioned by farmers as operating in their maize crop. Farmers’ knowledge of natural enemies only partially matched scientific knowledge and was associated with the ecological features of their respective field settings. Local knowledge about natural enemies was mainly restricted to abundant and easily observable predatory species. Farmers who were knowledgeable about biological control were also familiar with a larger variety of pest management alternatives than uninformed farmers. Management options covered a wide range of curative techniques, including conservation biological control. Farmers who relied on insecticides to manage pest outbreaks knew less about biological control and pesticide alternatives. In contrast, farmers who received IPM training mentioned more types of natural enemies and were familiar with a broader range of alternative pest management tactics. Our research suggests that IPM training modifies local knowledge to better fit its environmental context. This paper provides insights in the environmental context of local agro-ecological knowledge and its linkage with pest management decision making. It also constitutes a basis for modifying IPM extension programs to deliver locality-specific technologies while strengthening the local knowledge base. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media, Inc. 2007

Suggested Citation

  • Kris Wyckhuys & Robert O’Neil, 2007. "Local agro-ecological knowledge and its relationship to farmers’ pest management decision making in rural Honduras," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 24(3), pages 307-321, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:agrhuv:v:24:y:2007:i:3:p:307-321
    DOI: 10.1007/s10460-007-9068-y
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10460-007-9068-y
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10460-007-9068-y?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Elske van de Fliert & Ann Braun, 2002. "Conceptualizing integrative, farmer participatory research for sustainable agriculture: From opportunities to impact," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 19(1), pages 25-38, March.
    2. David Lind & Elizabeth Barham, 2004. "The social life of the tortilla: Food, cultural politics, and contested commodification," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 21(1), pages 47-60, March.
    3. Kees Jansen, 1997. "Diversity and the Nature of Technological Change in Hillside Farming in Honduras," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Jan P. Groot & Ruerd Ruben (ed.), Sustainable Agriculture in Central America, chapter 7, pages 108-126, Palgrave Macmillan.
    4. Sumberg, James & Okali, Christine & Reece, David, 2003. "Agricultural research in the face of diversity, local knowledge and the participation imperative: theoretical considerations," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 76(2), pages 739-753, May.
    5. Helda Morales & Ivette Perfecto, 2000. "Traditional knowledge and pest management in the Guatemalan highlands," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 17(1), pages 49-63, March.
    6. Lisa Price, 2001. "Demystifying farmers' entomological and pest management knowledge: A methodology for assessing the impacts on knowledge from IPM-FFS and NES interventions," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 18(2), pages 153-176, June.
    7. Hazel Johnson, 1997. "Food Insecurity as a Sustainability Issue: Lessons from Honduran Maize Farming," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Jan P. Groot & Ruerd Ruben (ed.), Sustainable Agriculture in Central America, chapter 6, pages 89-107, Palgrave Macmillan.
    8. James Mangan & Margaret Mangan, 1998. "A comparison of two IPM training strategies in China: The importance of concepts of the rice ecosystem for sustainable insect pest management," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 15(3), pages 209-221, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Bhawana Upadhyay & Dharani D. Burra & Than Thi Nguyen & Kris A. G. Wyckhuys, 2020. "Caught off guard: folk knowledge proves deficient when addressing invasive pests in Asian cassava systems," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 22(1), pages 425-445, January.
    2. Zhang, Han & Potts, Simon G. & Breeze, Tom & Bailey, Alison, 2018. "European farmers’ incentives to promote natural pest control service in arable fields," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 682-690.
    3. Qi Cai & Yushi Cai & Yali Wen, 2018. "Spatially Differentiated Trends between Forest Pest-Induced Losses and Measures for Their Control in China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(1), pages 1-16, December.
    4. Kassie, Menale & Abro, Zewdu & Kimathi, Emily & De Groote, Hugo & Tefera, Tadele & Subramanian, Sevgan & Wossen, Tesfamichael & Ekesi, Sunday & Ekesi, Sunday, 2021. "The Economic, Food Security, and Health Effects of Fall Armyworm in Ethiopia," 2021 Conference, August 17-31, 2021, Virtual 315887, International Association of Agricultural Economists.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Andreas Neef & Dieter Neubert, 2011. "Stakeholder participation in agricultural research projects: a conceptual framework for reflection and decision-making," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 28(2), pages 179-194, June.
    2. Klerkx, Laurens & Leeuwis, Cees, 2008. "Institutionalizing end-user demand steering in agricultural R&D: Farmer levy funding of R&D in The Netherlands," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(3), pages 460-472, April.
    3. Tripp, Robert & Wijeratne, Mahinda & Piyadasa, V. Hiroshini, 2005. "What should we expect from farmer field schools? A Sri Lanka case study," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 33(10), pages 1705-1720, October.
    4. Francis Yao Anyan, 2018. "Farmers Perceptions and Attitudes Towards the Use of Agricultural Indigenous Knowledge in Farming," Journal of Agriculture and Crops, Academic Research Publishing Group, vol. 4(6), pages 63-67, 06-2018.
    5. Schmook, Birgit & Vance, Colin, 2009. "Agricultural Policy, Market Barriers, and Deforestation: The Case of Mexico's Southern Yucatn," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 37(5), pages 1015-1025, May.
    6. Kris Wyckhuys & Robert O’Neil, 2010. "Social and ecological facets of pest management in Honduran subsistence agriculture: implications for IPM extension and natural resource management," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 12(3), pages 297-311, June.
    7. Lisa Price, 2001. "Demystifying farmers' entomological and pest management knowledge: A methodology for assessing the impacts on knowledge from IPM-FFS and NES interventions," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 18(2), pages 153-176, June.
    8. Loevinsohn, Michael E. & Berdegue, Julio A. & Guijt, Irene, 2002. "Deepening the basis of rural resource management: learning processes and decision support," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 73(1), pages 3-22, July.
    9. Reece, J. David, 2007. "Does genomics empower resource-poor farmers? Some critical questions and experiences," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 94(2), pages 553-565, May.
    10. William Lacy, 2023. "Local food systems, citizen and public science, empowered communities, and democracy: hopes deserving to live," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 40(1), pages 1-17, March.
    11. Sacha Amaruzaman & Douglas K. Bardsley & Randy Stringer, 2022. "Reflexive policies and the complex socio-ecological systems of the upland landscapes in Indonesia," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 39(2), pages 683-700, June.
    12. Kummer, Susanne & Leitgeb, Friedrich & Vogl, Christian R., 2017. "Farmers’ Own Research: Organic Farmers’ Experiments in Austria and Implications for Agricultural Innovation Systems," Sustainable Agriculture Research, Canadian Center of Science and Education, vol. 6(1), February.
    13. Martina Occelli & Jorge Sellare & Kauê De Sousa & Matteo Dell'Acqua & Leida Mercado & Saul Paredes & Juan Robalino & Juan Carlos Rosas & Jacob van Etten, 2024. "Group‐based and citizen science on‐farm variety selection approaches for bean growers in Central America," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 55(2), pages 270-295, March.
    14. Astrid Gurung, 2003. "Insects – a mistake in God's creation? Tharu farmers' perception and knowledge of insects: A case study of Gobardiha Village Development Committee, Dang-Deukhuri, Nepal," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 20(4), pages 337-370, December.
    15. Salembier, Chloé & Segrestin, Blanche & Berthet, Elsa & Weil, Benoît & Meynard, Jean-Marc, 2018. "Genealogy of design reasoning in agronomy: Lessons for supporting the design of agricultural systems," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 164(C), pages 277-290.
    16. Van den Berg, Henk & Jiggins, Janice, 2007. "Investing in Farmers--The Impacts of Farmer Field Schools in Relation to Integrated Pest Management," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 35(4), pages 663-686, April.
    17. Dalton, Timothy J. & Lilja, Nina K. & Johnson, Nancy & Howeler, Reinhardt, 2011. "Farmer Participatory Research and Soil Conservation in Southeast Asian Cassava Systems," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 39(12), pages 2176-2186.
    18. Pamela Richardson-Ngwenya & Maria Höhne & Brigitte Kaufmann, 2018. "Participatory problem analysis of crop activities in rural Tanzania with attention to gender and wealth: ‘setting the scene’ to enhance relevance and avoid exclusion in pro-poor innovation projects," Food Security: The Science, Sociology and Economics of Food Production and Access to Food, Springer;The International Society for Plant Pathology, vol. 10(4), pages 859-880, August.
    19. Robbins, M.J., 2013. "Locating food sovereignty: geographical and sectoral distance in the global food system," ISS Working Papers - General Series 557, International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam (ISS), The Hague.
    20. James Sumberg & John Thompson & Philip Woodhouse, 2013. "Why agronomy in the developing world has become contentious," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 30(1), pages 71-83, March.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:agrhuv:v:24:y:2007:i:3:p:307-321. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.