The ecology of traditional pest management in southeast Asia. Working Paper, East-West

For centuries small...scale subsistence farmers in the tropics have kept the pest damage in their fields within acceptable bounds by employing a wide variety of traditional management practices based on locally available materials. Particularly notable is the fact that they have done so without having to depend on chemical pesticides (Janzen 1973, Trenbath 1975, Gleissman et al. 1981, Altieri et al. 1983). Because the strengths of traditional pest management-its self...sufficiency and environmental compatibility-are in precisely those areas where modem pesticide...based agriculture is weak, it is worthwhile to examine. the traditional pest management of subsistence farmers for elements that should be retained in the course of agricultural modernization. Moreover, agriculture in developed countries is undergoing changes, such as reduction in the use of pesticides, that could draw upon traditional pest management technology. This chapter reviews traditional pest management practices and provides ecological explanations for how they function. Four major sources of information are used: • Qualitative descriptions of pest problems and pest management practices in traditional agriculture; • Quantitative studies of pest dynamics in traditional agriculture; • Ecological studies of natural ecosystems; and • Agricultural field experiments. Most available information on traditional pest management is based on qualitative observations rather than detailed quantitative measurements. Published observations that are scattered throughout the · agronomic, an... thropological, and ecological literature are supplemented with unpublished personal observations, primarily from Indonesia and Thailand. The literature on natural ecosystems and experimental field trials elucidates the ecological mechanisms involved