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LITE Profits Bangladesh Rice Farmers

Over the last 2 years, the LITE (Livelihood Improvement Through Ecology) project, led by IRRI (International Rice Research Institute) in partnership with BRRI (Bangladesh Rice Research Institute), has helped 2000 Bangladeshi rice farmers to increase yields while reducing pesticide and fertilizer use. The team found that highlighting the financial gain had more impact than teaching agro ecology. It is now training a further 4000 farmers, and hopes eventually to reach all of the country's 11.8 million rice farmers.

The project, part of the PETRRA (Poverty Elimination through Rice Research Assistance) initiative funded by DFID (UK Department for International Development), set out to investigate what caused a drop in rice yields when farmers stopped using insecticides. The goal was to find effective alternatives to the chemicals. As part of this, the project looked at ways of optimizing fertilizer (especially urea) use. Urea induces the plant to become more succulent and as a result more attractive to foliar pests. Reducing the amount of fertilizer can help reduce pest insect populations and thus insecticide applications.

The simple message of the project was, 'Do not use insecticide without need and judgment.' By following this message:

• Rice yields are not reduced
• Expenditure (on chemicals) is less
• The environment is not polluted

It came as something of a surprise to the project team to find that yields actually rose when the farmers did not apply insecticides. The increase was no flash in the pan, but was reflected across 600 fields in two districts and continued over four cropping seasons. The goal of the project became to reach as many farmers as possible with the message that they did not need to use insecticides.

There are a number of reasons why insecticides may be ineffective or even detrimental. They often kill natural enemies more effectively than the pests themselves, so may contribute to increased pest populations. Many supposed insect pests do not have any significant impact on the yield, yet farmers, believing any insect is a bad insect, may spray insects simply because they see them. Compounding this, many farmers use poor equipment to apply out-of-date or inappropriate insecticides at the wrong time.

Helping farmers off the 'pesticide treadmill' is not a new idea, but the uptake of this project so far has been exceptional. How was it achieved? The project identified 'lead farmers' - farmers who were relatively successful - and taught them how to conduct a simple experiment by partitioning their field into quadrants and giving each section a different treatment: with and without insecticide, with or without using a leaf colour chart to optimize fertilizer (urea) application dosage. Other farmers simply bisected their fields, and sprayed one half with insecticide and not the other. They also learnt to record data on insecticide and urea use and expenditure. Several hundred farmers trained in this way saw for themselves that the unsprayed crop gave higher yields.

Once the success of the no-spraying strategy became apparent, the project focused on scaling up from these trained farmers to reach thousands through a process of success case replication (SCR). After training, lead farmers train both other farmers in their own village and successful farmers from surrounding villages. The latter group then become lead farmers in their village, and train more farmers. In this way, the message ripples out across the countryside with the number of farmers trained increasing exponentially.

The success of this approach in the LITE project is clear from changes in insecticide use. This has been reduced by 99% amongst farmers participating in the project (farmers who have been trained by lead farmers and are conducting experiments in their own fields) and by 90% amongst non-participating farmers in the same villages (untrained farmers who have learnt about the project methods from trained neighbours and relatives). Even in villages where no training took place, insecticide use has dropped 55-80%. The changes reflect the degree of casual contact between farmers and are a clear indication that money talks.

For farmers, the saving on insecticides has meant greater profits, which can be turned into more rice production, which in turn brings in more income. For the funders too, this is proving to be a financially successful project, with a cost-benefit ratio of 1:4 in its first year. So long as the project impact can be sustained, the benefits will continue to accrue; in 5 years the ratio could reach 1:20.

The assumption that trained farmers will train other farmers underlies many participatory initiatives, but this does not always happen and indeed the trained farmers themselves do not always continue with innovations once a project has finished. In this case, the LITE team are optimistic because farmers have seen the results in their own fields, and the impact can clearly be seen to advantage them. In addition, not spraying takes less time and money than not spraying. They project team also ascribe the uptake of the project message and its spread to non-participants to its simplicity: spraying insecticides wastes money. They point out that farmers understand money more easily than agroecology.

Contact: Dr Gary C. Jahn, PI,
LITE Project & Senior Entomologist,
Entomology and Plant Pathology Department,
IRRI, DAPO Box 7777, Metro Manila, Philippines.
Email: g.jahn@cgiar.org

Dr Nazira Quraishi Kamal,
In-country Coordinator of LITE Project,
Chief Scientific Officer & Head,
Entomology Division, BRRI,
Gazipur 1701, Bangladesh.
Email: naziraqk@hotmail.com
Fax: +880 2 9262734

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