“Key Informant Survey” of Production, Value, Losses and ... - DfID

Village-level suppressive fruit fly management in India:
Issues determining the optimum scale of cooperative control
JM Stonehouse a , JD Mumford a , RK Patel b , BK Joshi b , VM Patel b , RC Jhala b , DB Sisodiya b , ZP Patel b , VS Jagadale b ,
J Thomas b , CV Vidya b , T JiJi b , B Nair b , HS Singh b , AK Mohantha b , S Rai b , S Satpathy b , RP Shukla b , A Manzar b and A Verghese b
(a) Imperial College London, Ascot, UK (b) Indian Council for Agricultural Research, New Delhi, India.
E-mail corresponding author: j.stonehouse@imperial.ac.uk
Village Cooperative Control
There are often benefits to the coordinated, suppressive control of pests over an area larger than an individual farm, but smaller those used for highly coordinated, high-technology
applications such as SIT. This study evaluated the returns to fruit fly management at the scales of the “farm” and of the “village” in India, and found that village-level application had
approximately double the effectiveness of farm-level application. Interviews and discussions examined the social features making cooperative control sustainable at village level.
Five Keys to Sustainability
1 - Farm Size Among large farms the number of farmers needed to obtain cooperative control is
relatively small. Among very small farms only cooperative control may be effective, as immediate
reimmigration from neighbouring plots undermines farm-level controls.
2 - Problem Seriousness Sustainable cooperative control must overcome inertia, apathy and
suspicion. The perception of the problem as serious is particularly important in overcoming this.
3 - Shared Economy Sustainable cooperative control is enhanced when it can be “grafted” or
“piggybacked” onto other cooperative activities - such as marketing or buying inputs – rather than begun
from scratch.
4 - Social cohesion Some mutual trust is highly important. Farmers tend to trust cooperatives’
recommendations for cultivation when these also buy their produce, as the farmer can see a vested
interest by the cooperative in the success of production rather than the sale of the input.
5 – Tolerance of Imperfection “Forgivingness” of incomplete application of area-wide controls, so
their effect is not destroyed by a few isolated untreated areas, is important where there are truculent
individuals who will not cooperate with a group effort. When cooperative control aims to be suppressive,
rather than eradicative, private control by each individual can still obtain a return, regardless of the
participation of neighbours, undermining the “free rider” strategy. This “forgivingness” is a function of the
ecology of pests which are relatively “K-selected”, such as fruit flies, rather than “r-selected” such as
hemiptera.
Farmers were interviewed singly and
in groups (photo: HS Singh)
Cooperatives which buy
produce are trusted to
provide inputs
(photo: J Stonehouse)
Cooperative pest management sits naturally alongside cooperative
marketing (photos: J Thomas)
Acknowledgement: Work funded by the UK Department for International Development Crop Protection Programme, Project R8840, collaborating with the Indian Council for Agricultural Research
IAEA-CN-
131/92P