Multidisciplinary approach to pest management and the African farmer

Ecological consideration indicate that traditional agroecosystems involving mixed cropping and genetic diversity among crop species are relatively more stable than modern agroecosystems. Modern food production technologies involving more uniform crops over wide areas, use of more costly inputs and associated pest problems are ecologically less stable. With population pressure, greater pressures on the land and shortening of periods of natural recycling of nutrients reduced yields and loss of soil fertility occur. This calls for introduction of modern, farming techniques of the 'green revolution' type. Yet the experience of developed countries in about three decades of over-reliance on chemical pesticides, the development of resistance in target species, and environmental hazard of pesticides require caution in development of pest management control programs. What is needed is a program of integrated control or effective pest management as part of an overall natural resource management. This necessitates greater cooperation and interaction among scientists in various disciplines in the study of the environment, tropical a9roeGosystems, and development of a range of compatible pest control methods within the means of the farmer, economically and technologically acceptable, and adapted to various agro-ecosystems. All these require (i) changes in biological education and training, (ii) better communication among scientists and the public, and (iii) provision of better advisory services to government policy am regulatory agencies

The IITA farming systems program

The International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) was established in 1967 on 1,000 hectares of land located at 3o 54'E longitude and 7o 30'N latitude, about 16 kiloneters north of Ibadan, the capital of the Western State of Nigeria. It is one of a network of international research institutes where priority is given to research, training and related activities aimed at quantitatively and qualitatively increasing food production in the developing countries of the world. These countries contine to experience shortages in available food supplies resulting from much higher rates of population growth as compared to the rates of increase in food production. Specifically, IITA's activities involve multidisciplinary, problem-oriented research in food crops production which, for effectiveness and rapid progress, is restricted to the major food crops of the humid tropics. The humid tropics is defined as the broad belt girdling the earth in the lower latitutes on both sides of the equator where precipitation exceeds evaporation for more than half the year and where normally the tropical rain forest constitutes the climax vegetation