Integrated Pest Management OR-IPM

GOOD Morning once again-an honest and kind taxi driver in San Francisco drove around for one hour to find the woman who left her purse in his cab containing $1.792 dollars in cash, Many of his fellow drivers ridiculed him for not pocketing the money. I like what he said: I am a card-carrying member of the Christian faith, and what good is it to go to church if you don't practice what you preach? “An 11 year old boy who read this in the local paper wrote “I am the sort of kid who can't lie, if do I get a tingly feeling in my stomach”. I wish we were all as sensitive as that. Lord, make us people of unquestioned honesty and integrity in all things whether large or small, lets pause for a moment: Lord help me to be honest in all I do and say, God, grant me grace and power to live for you today. A person of integrity has nothing to hide.

Our topic: it seems to me that not so many people really understand yet what integrated pest management (IPM) is all about, as we often come across conflicting views on this subject, I for one, wanted to learn more, so during my research I came across a paper or report by a gentleman called Sosimo Ma. Pablico, PhD. I hope you find it as informative as I did. So what is IPM all about? IPM is the selection integration and implementation of pest control that is economically sound, economically viable and socially acceptable. This definition is now called the IPM Philosophy. One important principle in IPM is that a species is not a pest unless it exceeds a tolerable level. Most insects (plant feeders and natural enemies) live in the ecosystem where population levels are tolerable and rarely occur in outbreak situations. However, resurgence in population due to application of broad-spectrum insecticides occurs as in the case of the brown planthopper (BPN).

Another principle is that the ecosystem in the management unit in IPM. Any intervention or manipulation will affect not only one species but also the whole community of organisms living in it. A very important principle is that natural control should be maximized. Natural control is the suppression of an insect population by forces of the environment, including physical and biological factors such as predators, parasitoids and pathogens. For instance, there are rich communities of natural enemies found inside the rice ecosystem. The overall objective of IPM is to reduce yield losses due to insect pests, diseases weeds, rats and golden and apple snail to an acceptance level. To attain this objective, research should focus on four important concerns which are to raise farm income, safeguard the farmers health and safety, maintain environment and ecological stability and sustainability. It is important that researchers must plan their activities according to these concerns. It must be always remembered that if a technology is not economical or acceptable to the farmers, its implementation would be difficult.

Therefore, one of the objectives of IPM is to improve the pest management decisions of farmers. The big question is, how is IPM done? A number of tools are used in IPM. These tools include resistant varieties, natural biological control agents, cultural practices and insecticides. Natural biological control agents include predators, parasitoids and microorganisms that cause diseases in insect like bacteria, virus and fungus. Insecticides are only used in the IPM process as a last resort. In IPM insecticides are viewed as corrective, as opposed to preventive measures and are deployed around the economic criteria. Rich communities of natural occurring biological control agents exist in the ecosystem and therefore application of insecticides in a certain crop like rice, is unnecessary and results in wastage. So how do the farmers learn IPM? Rice farmers for instance learn IPM through the farmer field school with the use of agro-ecosystem system analysis or AESA. I am not sure whether this is in operation here in Bohol . But will find out. They are required to monitor their fields and take note of almost everything in the ecosystem, such as weather (sunlight, rainfall, relative humidity), density of pests and natural enemies and crop damage. The farmers also learn things like plant health, the role of biological control agents or friendly organisms and the ability of the plant to compensate or certain levels of damage. They to make appropriate management decisions based on their filed observations.