Status report on global Neem usage - Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal

5. PROSPECTS AND POSSIBILITIES FOR FUTURE NEEM USAGE
5. Prospects and Possibilities for Future Neem Usage
Even though it is not possible to state concretely the extent to which neem is used throughout
the world, this plant’s potential is more than evident.
Some countries are on the way to harnessing this potential for a broad section of the population,
neem’s usage as a natural pesticide is one of the key examples of this. On the other
hand it is however clear that neem is still underexploited e.g. even in India only approx. 30%
of the neem seeds are harvest.
After periods of cautious attempts at testing and integrating neem trials into projects of technical
cooperation in the 1970s and a period of comprehensive research in the 1980s, GTZ
started in the 1990s to work out practice-related concepts to exploit the potential of neem
trees in development countries.
While forestry, health, rural development and fishery sections of GTZ had different sideactivities
on neem, the section “plant protection and storage” developed concepts to make
use of neem most consistently.
In the early stages the most popular strategy was that small farmers or farmers' associations
should produce their own pesticides. Simple techniques were worked out to promote this
strategy. Evaluations such as those of MAERZ (11), LEUPOLZ (10) MOSER (1996), and
NAIK et al. (38) demonstrate the constraints on these concepts. Experience from
governmental extension services and NGOs e.g. in Sri Lanka, Chad, Thailand and elsewhere
in the tropics shows that 2-45% (35, 42) of the farmers who have access to neem and know
how to prepare and use neem extracts see neem as a viable alternative to synthetic pesticides
(14, 43, own data). This is also the case in countries with low labour costs where neem
extracts are economically more viable than synthetic pesticides, such as in Sri Lanka and
Madagascar (KUDAGAMAGE 1998, RAKOTOARIVONY 1998, both presentations on
seminars).
The majority of farmers, however, prefer ready-to-use pesticides, which should be locally
available at a reasonable price (MOSER 1996, 43).
Subsequently, in the late 1990s GTZ put emphasis on the promotion of formulated and
compatible neem-based pesticides with much greater market potential. Currently wide use of
ready-to-use neem products is limited by their often high price of the products manufactured
in industrialized countries. This is why neem pesticides are mainly used only in niche
markets such as organic farming, private gardens, and in the case of resistant pests or those
difficult to control. Neemproducts manufactured in developing countries could be much
cheaper as it can be seen from Kenya, Thailand especially if a strong competition exists such
as in India.
Neem is currently used as a supplement or alternative to other high-priced biological control
agents such as Bacillus thuringiensis products or to specialised selective synthetic pesticides.
It would be however desirable from the environmental, health and political points of
view that neem-based pesticides become a more compatible alternative even for standard
pesticides considering the costs only.
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