pesticides and clearly proposed their reduced application (04). This was followed by the subsequent politicisation of pesticides; which can be said to date back to Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (05), but has been increasingly intense over the last two decades. In Southeast Asia, rampant misuse of synthetic pesticides and failures in controlling pests such as the brown plant hopper in rice, led to several area-wide IPM programmes in 1980s and 1990s (06). Unfortunately, the momentum that IPM gained during this period could not be maintained and although the concept still appears in government policies, support for it is currently very low. Pest management in Southeast Asia is confronted with a sharp decline in productivity of active ingredients, which results in constantly increasing demands for further inputs (07). Recent international studies have shown that, especially in rice and vegetables, reduction or removal of synthetic pesticides can even increase yields, turning an old paradigm upside down (08). The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) currently defines IPM as “an ecosystem approach to crop production and protection that combines different management strategies and practices to grow healthy crops and minimize the use of pesticides. FAO promotes IPM as the preferred approach to crop protection and regards it as a pillar of both sustainable intensification of crop production and pesticide risk reduction. As such, IPM is being mainstreamed in FAO activities involving crop production and protection.” (21). The fact remains that chemical pesticides predominate and cannot be ignored. The industry body representing research-based pesticide companies, CropLife (22), influences farmers and policy makers, and emphasises the role played by pesticides. IPM is interpreted as follows: “… a system of managing pests designed to be sustainable. IPM involves using the best combination of cultural, biological and chemical measures for particular circumstances, including plant biotechnology as appropriate. This provides the most cost effective, environmentally sound and socially acceptable method of managing diseases, insects, weeds and other pests in agriculture”. The plant science industry has endorsed IPM practices for many years, and has publicly declared its commitment to promoting IPM. All CropLife International member companies support and abide by the FAO definition of IPM in its International Code of Conduct on the Distribution and Use of Pesticides (Article 2). 15 IPM strategies consist of three basic components: • Prevention of pest build-up through use of appropriate crop cultivation methods. • Observation of the crop to monitor pest levels, as well as the levels of natural control mechanisms, such as beneficial insects, in order to make the correct decision on the need for control measures. • Intervention where control measures are needed. Inevitably, the various stakeholders (above) are likely to place different emphasis on the meaning of IPM. In contrast to the CropLife approach, came the idea in the late 1980s and 1990s that IPM should be essentially “biological control on a grand scale” (23), with biopesticides at their most useful when they recycle (like a parasitoid) rather than following a ‘chemical model’ of efficacy. However, there are also dangers in this extreme, with the risk of deskilling farmers in useful techniques.
Implementing Biological Control Agents in the ASEAN Region
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