Escaping the Lock-in to Pesticide Use: Do Vietnamese Farmers Respond to Flower Strips as a Restoration Practice or Pest Management Action?

Abstract

Ecological engineering using linear flower strips is proposed as an alternative to insecticide-based rice pest management. However, its success depends on farmers’ appreciations of related interventions as part of an ecosystem restoration process. We examined agronomic and pest management responses to flower strips among 305 farmers surveyed at 12 villages in the Mekong Delta Region (MDR) of Vietnam. Practices by conventional farmers at the same villages were used as a baseline. The ecological engineering farmers mainly integrated flower strips with pest management practices by reducing insecticide applications before 40 days after rice crop establishment (ca 38% of farmers; 9% more than on conventional farms). Flower strips were also associated with less frequent and irregular insecticide applications or with insecticide-free rice (i.e., possibly IPM: ca 19% of ecological engineering farmers). Otherwise, farmers (ca 43% of ecological engineering farmers) continued to apply insecticides prophylactically and, in some cases, applied more insecticides than their conventional neighbors. Flower strips were not associated with reductions in any other pesticides. Reported yields were not directly affected by flower strips or pesticide inputs. Our results suggest that ecological engineering was not widely regarded by participating farmers as an ecosystem restoration practice, but rather, as a pest management action. Further promotion of flower strips as a component of ecosystem restoration is required to break the lock-in to pesticide use at ecologically engineered rice farms in the MDR.

Diversified Rice Farms with Vegetable Plots and Flower Strips Are Associated with Fewer Pesticide Applications in the Philippines

“…This suggests that intercropping repellent flowers or herbs with vegetables on the bunds will at least protect the vegetables against damage, with beneficial effects that may spill over to the rice crop. However, the choice of bund vegetation must also consider the possible exacerbation of pest damage to rice [31,44].…”

“…Despite these issues, the careful consideration of botanical products represents a novel opportunity to expand on the practices of ecological engineering and further reduce pesticide use. For example, many farmers in Vietnam who established flower and vegetable strips as an ecological engineering practice failed to reduce pesticide inputs, and some of them applied insecticides to their bund-grown vegetables [22,31]. By encouraging farmers to grow plants that could be used to prepare botanical pesticides, farmers might be encouraged to further avoid chemical pesticides.…”

“…In rice ecosystems, farmers are encouraged to plant strips of vegetation on bunds as a key ecological engineering practice [19,[26][27][28][29]. Reports from China, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, the Philippines, and Bangladesh have shown that flower strips and planted bunds can increase natural enemy diversity and abundance, increase the mortality of rice herbivores due to egg parasitoids, mirid bugs, and spiders, thereby reducing pest densities, and bring added benefits to rice production systems such as increasing the diversity of insectivorous and snail-eating riceland birds, providing additional farm products for home use or sale to markets, and improving farm aesthetics [19,22,23,26,30,31].…”