A country whose most of the economy is governed by the agriculture and most of the people are engaged in agriculture in Nepal.Integrated pest management is a must for farmers in Nepal. A country which is landlocked yet has the most numbers of diversities and the similarities among people which is agriculture. With all kind of resources like a huge amount of water sources, largest biodiversities, topographical variation, the deviating climate within every 7 kilometers and a large number of human resources, the condition, and status of the country and the people is same. 65% of the total populations are engaged in agriculture and it leads to 34% of the National GDP but the agriculture practice here is subsistence only.

Smallholders are those farmers which own very less land which is 1 hector or less and they grow a few crops in subsistence way. These sort of small family-run farms are the reason for the livelihood of the poor and undernourished people. Not the piece of land, but they lack all another kind of fulfillment of the basic requirement of a human being. One of the major reasons behind the small piece of land is land fragmentation system prevailing in our society. The property own by the father is divided among sons, those pieces again get fragmented among their sons and eventually leave the farmer with a lesser amount of land.

For our country, the major crops grown by the farmers are rice, maize, wheat-like cereal crops and vegetables like tomato, cauliflower, cabbage etc but in a subsistence way due to the small amount or piece of land they own. The cause of the reduced yield from the crop grown is the pest, disease, birds, wild animals, rodents, nematodes and pathogens along with the weeds. From the evolution of the life and all the living system in the earth, insects and pest are also developing along. There infestation or attack has always been one of the most major issues while dealing with the crop cultivation. Every year there is the outburst of a new pest or some sort of disease which case the significant amount of crop yield loss.

The one and the most used way to control the disease pest and their impact are to use the chemical pesticides and insecticides. Not only that, every year the pest is being tolerant to the pesticides we apply and this leads to the application of the higher doses and in a harmful way as the rates of chemical being used against pest are seen, it leads the degradation of the soil quality, kill all the beneficial insects with harming ones, causing a health problem in the human who spray and consume the products, increases the pollution level and many more. Thinking out of pesticides and insecticides, there has to be the way to control the yield loss from the pest and disease and other cause. Integrated pest management is such a way that is the complete management of the strategies that deals with the sustainability of the resource ensuring the healthy crops in the field.

Integrated Pest Management now has been one of such activities in the sector of agriculture’s that leads to the reduction of the use of the chemicals in crops, grow healthy crops, conserve biodiversity and ensure the food security of the farmers. The method itself doesn’t say to completely abandon the chemicals but to use them in a safe manner. Pesticides are of 4 different kinds am0ng with red is the most toxic and dangerous while the green is the light one. No, just the training, Integrated pest management (IPM) approach believes in the empowerment of the farmers so that they will be able to take the suitable decision regarding the crops they have grown and a problem occurring in the crops. Since 81% of the people still live in urban areas and have the simple lifestyle, they rear cattle’s, goats enough for themselves and grow vegetable enough or less for themselves. In such situation, Integrated Pest Management (IPM) helps farmers to use all the natural and available resources around them like, neem, tite pati, cow urine, cow dung, sisno and a lot more to create the biopesticides and organic manure.

Self-preparing and using such products eventually helps small farmers to save their money that they use for synthetic fertilizers and chemicals. It also helps save them from the health hazards that occur due to the exposure to the pesticides. Empowering is one of the first principles of IPM followed by the process of regular monitoring of the crop they are growing. The regular visit and monitoring of the stages, pest, and insects there help farmers to understand the biology of the crop more. Similarly, it deals with the conservation of the biodiversity also as it talks about the conservation of the natural enemies like ladybird beetle, mantid, tiger beetle, dragonfly, etc as they are the natural predators to different harmful insects. Conserving such insects leads to the reduction in the pest as well as their occurs the balance in the ecosystem and crop yield will also improve. After all this, it will lead to the healthy crop in the field. The crop that got organic manures, bio-pesticides, regular monitoring and very fewer chemicals are the healthy crop.

On the way of disseminating the idea of IPM, there is the method called farmers field school which is basically a wall-less school system where the learning happens in the field. In FFS, farmer’s group share ideas and their experiences, learn about all the factors of crops likes, stages of growth, nursery, transplantation, watering, harmful insect, beneficial insects, the spacing to be maintained, the way of cultivation with low input and high output etc.

The FFS starts with the social understanding of the farmers and their society, their major problems, their requirement of the training and many more. A whole crop (vegetable or cereal crop) of the season is the learning subject and from seed sowing to harvesting and taking the return, the FFS continues with the objective to empower the farmers towards growing healthy crops leading to the higher yield and reduced chemical use. The whole process is a success only if the farmers become the expert and lead to the self-understanding capacity of the crop physiology and control it biologically on their own.

Integrated Pest Management (IPM) thus is such a way which can be adopted easily by the smallholder farmers with small land and help them self to gain their livelihood and food security. Promoting small farms and farmers is one of the important aspects in the context of developing country like ours to strengthen the major population group. It brings on the use of all the local available reserves as the manure and biopesticides and other biological methods to control the pest and insects which reduce the non-affordability of expensive fertilizers and pesticides requirement for the crops. It goes along with the traditional way of farming with the slight upgrade in the way due to which it is easy for farmers to adopt. The tools used are simple that all the people can easily understand and they can interpret as well.

Sunita Thapa

HICAST

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