Devouring profit - International Coffee Organization

We have attempted to show that CBB is a very complex pest with many factors
affecting both its abundance and control. In the following analysis we will integrate all
the information we have gathered to formulate a strategic view of the problem.
6.1 IPM strategy
According to the International Pest Management Institute (2002), IPM is: “a system
using multiple methods, a decision making process, a risk reduction system, information
intensive, biological based, cost effective and site specific”. If this is a widely
accepted definition it is very clear that IPM is a complex strategy to be understood and
carried out by farmers whatever their socio-economic conditions. This approach implies
a concerted effort by farmers to comprehend the relationships between the
different components and concepts of IPM. We broadly support this approach to pest
control but it needs to be made clear that IPM is neither easy to understand nor easy
to carry out.
Indeed we submit that the above description meshes uneasily with our own perceptions
of resource-poor farmers’ present capabilities. Either IPM has to become easier
to undertake or farmers will require intensive re-skilling.
6.2 How IPM strategy clashes with
socio-economic reality
If we look at the requirements of IPM against farmers’ needs and abilities, we deduce
that smallholder coffee farmers are not ready for IPM. It presupposes a certain level of
education that is frequently lacking and a way of looking at things that is foreign.
Intrinsically it is a very modern concept, a “knowledge intensive” solution and we
believe it is emblematic of smallholders’ problems as they try to survive in a global
economy, on the wrong side of the ‘digital divide’.
IPM principally depends on measurement of pest levels and then calculations to estimate
crop damage and then a decision by the farmer on whether to control or not,
and if so which method to use. In its original form, it is predicated upon the farmer
having at least secondary education and a fairly sophisticated knowledge of pest biology
so that he can apply the correct control at the moment when the pest is at its most
vulnerable or before it is at its most damaging. It is rooted in a certain ethic, where the
farmer invests in knowledge, equipment and extra labour in the expectation of it
saving him more in the long run than he expends.
The problem is that this reasoning is not readily transportable to smallholder farmers
with at most primary education, less than perfect confidence in experts and limited
resources. What is worse, many scientists and extensionists who serve these farmers,
have been taught about IPM as though it is an established fact and not something that
is necessarily work-in-progress, questionable, negotiable or subject to revision.
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