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Need for Pesticide Risk Assessment and Risk Assessment in IPM Programmes

There is an increasing demand on IPM projects to examine their economic, environmental, health and social impacts, including their achievements in reducing pesticide related risks. The Environmental Impact Quotient (EIQ) is one of the tools that is being used to measure achievements in pesticide risk reduction. It was developed in [...]

Overcoming challenges to ecosystem health calls for breaking down disciplinary and professional barriers. Through reflection on a research and development project to address pesticide-related concerns in northern Ecuador, this article presents challenges encountered and accommodations made, ranging from staff recruitment, through baseline assessments and community education activities, to mobilising for [...]

This manual offers you a highly exciting discovery voyage about the life of weaver ants, how you can make best use of them to protect your fruit and other tree crops and hence how to save money. Because the focus is on practical aspects based on improved insights of underlying ecological [...]

Weaver ants are predatory insects which kill key pests of many tree crops effectively decreasing the need to use pesticides. Paul Van Mele and Jean-François Vayssières describe how these fascinating insects have been husbanded effectively in Asia to manage pests of citrus and cashew. Their use has recently been extended [...]

The focus in this thesis is to form a view of how well soil fertility research performs within the ever shifting smallholder contexts. This study examined application of agroecological knowledge for soil fertility management by smallholder farmers, with the view to enhancing the utility of research among resource-deprived farmers of western Kenya. [...]

Integrated Pest Management (IPM) is a multifaceted, ecologically-based strategy that relies on close observation and monitoring of a crop before making management decisions. IPM combines a number of techniques to effectively suppress plant diseases and insect pests in an economically and environmentally conscious manner. Utilizing IPM to manage plant diseases [...]

A study to improve soil fertility and farm productivity under intensive crop-dairy smallholder farming systems was carried out in Kiambu District, central Kenya highlands in the period 2003-2005 using farmer field school approach.

The paper presents a methodology that guided several ethnoentomological research projects and goes on to examine and compare the results from two independent research locations in Asia. The first location is in the Philippines, a Green Revolution area that has been heavily impacted by extension messages and insecticide use. The [...]