Transcript Integrated Pest Management in Iran

Integrated Pest Management in
Iran: from IPM to IPPM to IPPPM
Brief overview of the market
Breakdown of agricultural exports
($millions)
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Agricultural exports
averaged $756.6 million per
year during the period
March 1996 to March 2001
The most important crops by
category were:
– Pistachios ($345
million)
– Fresh dates, apples &
melons
– Saffron, green cumin &
black tea
– Conserved tomato
products
– Apple juice
– Potatoes, onions and
shallots
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Brief overview of pesticide use
• By official estimates average
of 23,000 tonnes of pesticides
used in Iran each year (not
including granules)
• By unofficial calculations,
$120 million spent on
pesticides each year. This
includes:
– hidden subsidies
(subsidised exchange rate
= one fifth of the actual
exchange rate)
– direct subsidies on some
products such as
herbicides
A history of Integrated Pest Management in Iran
• Early days…
– IPM activities date back to before the Revolution
– Limited to isolated activities in universities and government
research institutions
– Often single-purpose initiatives, e.g. biological control of
particular pests or cultural and mechanical controls
– Practically no community involvement except in isolated
experiences, mainly at Bu Ali Sina University and its Master’s
program in Habitat Management (non-chemical IPM)
– This program did not continue in the same way after the
Revolution, but some of this work moved to an NGO, CENESTA
– IPM crops: melons, apples, pistachios, rice, potatoes, olives,
pomegranites, grapes…
• The Global IPM Facility
– Key transition event following the
Revolution: involvement of the Global
IPM Facility (GIF) since 2000
– Entry of GIF supported through NGO
action
– Support to NGO activities and the
(former) Ministry of Agriculture
– Before GIF: IPM considered a primarily
technical issue involving research
– After GIF:
• support for community IPM pilot
projects;
• Indonesian expert on Community
IPM assigned to help this effort;
• collaboration between civil society
(NGO and local community) and
government strengthened
• Regional training workshop held
in Tehran
• High Council for Pesticide Reduction
– Establishment of the High Council represents another key turning point
– Set target of reducing pesticide use by 7% each year
– In principle, money saved would be made available to the search for
alternatives
– Some of the main achievements of the High Council:
• significant reduction in use of pesticides;
• downgrading the importance of some pests of national importance
so that free universal aerial sprayings no longer required;
• decreasing significantly the amount of direct and indirect subsidies
to pesticides;
• getting farmers to pay increasing proportion of costs of pest control;
• enforcing regulations on procedures for use of pesticides;
• encouraging biological control of pests; and,
• setting up a procedure for entertaining a wide variety of applications
for project grants– mostly for finding alternatives to pesticides,
encouraging IPM policies.
• Integration of the Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of Jihad
– Integration strengthened IPM efforts – particularly in the field
– Each ministry’s extension department merged under the Vice Minister
for Extension and Farming Systems
– Extension is now under the direct supervision of the Director General for
Extension and Information Transfer
– Enabled replacing the top-down approach of the previous extension
department with participatory processes
– Mission of the extension agent is now to facilitate a community process
and support community initiatives
– IPM project launched at the provincial level in Semnan
– LOA signed between Deputy Minister for Extension and Popular
Participation and CENESTA to extend IPM throughout the country
IPM to IPPPM
•
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IPM field projects since 1995 led to the
search for viable forms of participatory or
community IPM
–
Building on local knowledge and
expertise
–
Ensuring sustainability of the project
–
Meeting local needs
–
Community empowerment
Experiences with participatory IPM (IPPM)
since 1998:
–
the community guides and owns the
entire process
–
it doesn’t matter what crops you work
with, whether in greenhouses or in the
field
–
FFS is a key tool
–
Pilot Community IPM project led to
greater motivation among the local
community, less energy was needed
from the government, and people
learned more
–
For some crops, pesticide use has
fallen to zero
• The third “P”:
Production
– Pests are addressed
as one of the
potentially limiting
factors of production
– Agriculture must be
looked at in a holistic
way
– Getting to the root
causes of farmers’
problems
Opportunities and threats of IPM in
Iran
•
Very good experiences with community-led initiatives
•
Marketing efforts need to be strengthened
•
International networking and sharing of experiences is crucial: the isolation that
followed the Revolution and war was a limiting factor
We have good capacities for capacity building at the regional level (ADA staff came
from Afghanistan)
•
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Good technical capacities exist for
IPM: e.g. small-scale production of
viruses, bacteria and fungi for
biological control
•
Despite gains, traditional
approaches are difficult to replace –
particularly at higher policy levels:
top-down approaches to “learning”,
chemical approaches vs.
biological/ecological approaches,
etc.
•
Decision-making is still centralised;
institutional structures not conducive
to inter-departmental cooperation
•
Participatory approaches need time
to sink in: experts tend to be
resistant to change and more
comfortable with a top-down
approach, do not want to give up
control
• Involvement of all
stakeholders has led to
greater success and
needs to built even
further
• IPM Committee
established
• No mechanisms/support
for IPPPM at the larger
scale, e.g. no
coordinating networks
• Systematic/institutional
obstacles
•
Many provinces have expressed interest in
IPPPM
•
Existing capacities not enough to meet this
demand
•
Technical experts need to build up their
capacity to facilitate and coordination
•
Government lacks a systematic programme
or policy for supporting IPM and organic
agriculture
•
This is where civil society can be very useful
•
Government policy to encourage civil society
and decentralisation; decentralisation is
taking place although with bumps and starts.
It’s not a question of whether, but of how to
decentralise.
•
Need to work on adaptive self-replication
–
centralised processes tend to overgeneralise the problems and the
solutions
–
replication must be adaptive to take
into account local needs
–
Need to build on our past experiences
with pilot projects