What has been the relationship between pesticide use and rice production?
PETER: Pesticide levels went down after policy interventions from central governments. Rice production continued to go up. Food grain production as a whole continued to go up. Clearly, food grain production wasn’t connected to pesticide use levels. The pesticides had overshot. There had been an over use of pesticides. In India it was possible to reduce the annual use of pesticides by about thirty thousand tons a year out of a beginning number of about seventy-two thousand tons. In Indonesia the reduction was about ten thousand tons out of an initial base of twenty-five. And rice or basic food grain production kept going up. Interviewer: Did integrated pest management originate with Rice? PETER: Integrated pest management started out first in cash crops and in perennial crops, such as trees. Oranges, apples, oil palm, rubber, cocoa, coconuts, all had pretty good engrained pest management before rice did. The number of rice farmers is so many thousand times greater than the number of the
