Studies on IPM policy in SE Asia : two centuries of plant protection in Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand

Integrated Pest Management (IPM) became a widely supported approach in the control of pests and diseases in crops. This study describes IPM policy and implementation, a.o. by the FAO Inter-Country Programme for the Development and Application of IPM in Rice in S and SE Asia in Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand.A brief description of agricultural development in the three countries serves to understand their priorities in crop production and protection, the origin of their institutions, their main pest and disease problems and their achievements in the public and private sectors. Examples demonstrate the ingenuity of colonial research in solving major obstacles in estate agriculture. A comparison of methods of pest management in pre-World War II agriculture without synthetic pesticides with modern IPM technology reveals some essential differences.In SE Asia in the 1960s, large scale intensification programs in rice production on the basis of Green Revolution technology led to serious outbreaks of secondary pests and virus epidemics. The Regional and National IPM programmes induced a political commitment to IPM in Indonesia and Malaysia. Large scale IPM training following the FFS extension method had reached about 1 million Indonesian farmers by 1996. An analysis of sales data over sixteen years shows that the effect of the FAO IPM programmes on the pesticide markets of the three countries is evident in Indonesia, but not in Malaysia and Thailand.