Abstract
The purpose of the study was to ascertain the extent of Integrated Pest Management (IPM) practices by three different farming communities. It also explores the contribution of 21 selected characteristics of the farmers to their use of IPM practice and to identify the constraints faced by the farmers in using IPM. Data were collected from randomly selected 240 farmers in Gouripur Upazilla under Mymensingh District during May to November, 2008. The selected characteristics were age, education, family education, family size, farm size, annual income, savings, extension media contact, innovation proneness, agricultural knowledge, training experience, household assets, calorie intake, environmental awareness, cosmopoliteness, use of agricultural credit, IPM knowledge, risk orientation, attitude towards IPM, organizational participation and farm mechanization constituted the independent variables. The use of IPM practice by the farmers was operationalized into 'IPM Practice Index' was the dependent variable of the study. Majority (63.8%) of the FFS farmers were found under medium user of IPM practices and slight above one-third (36.2%) of them were found to be high user of IPM practices. On the contrary, all non-FFS (NFS) farmers (100%) and majority (87.5%) of general (GEN) farmers were found to be medium user of IPM practices. The performance of different categories of farmers under five IPM components i.e. resistant varieties, cultural practices, mechanical measures, biological agents and rational use of chemicals was measured, and in most cases FFS farmers endowed better performance than NFS and GEN farmer counterparts. Findings also stated that FFS farmers were found 79.13% IPM practitioners which was higher than that of NFS (65.98%) and GEN (60.94%) farmers. Chi-square, regression and path analysis were used to explore the relationships among the variables. Dunkan's Multiple Range Test (DMRT) was employed to determine the significant differences among different categories of farmers. The findings of the chi-square test showed that out of 21 farmers' characteristics only six like age, family education, farm size, savings, household assets and attitude towards IPM did not show any significant relationship with their use of IPM practices. The FFS farmers were found significantly differ from the rest of 15 selected characteristics than their NFS and GEN farmers counterparts. All the selected characteristics were significantly correlated with use of IPM practices except four such as age, cosmopoliteness, family education and use of agricultural credit. Step wise multiple regression analysis revealed that five variables namely IPM knowledge (89.5%), environmental awareness (1.4%), training experience (2.6%), agricultural knowledge (0.3%) and education (0.3%) were the important contributing variables which combined explained 94.0 percent of total variation on use of IPM practices. Path analysis indicated that IPM knowledge (0.511) had the highest positive direct effect while environmental awareness (0.659) had highest positive indirect effect to the IPM practice. The major constraints encountered by the farmers to implement IPM practices were 'high price, scarcity and adulteration of fertilizer', 'irrigation crises due to load shedding and price hike of fuel', 'seed impurity and scarcity', 'degeneration of the currently used varieties cause low yield', 'lack of knowledge about pest selective pesticides'. While use of IPM practice, the FFS farmers in most of the cases, were found in a better position than NFS and GEN farmers, but still there are some cases where NFS and GEN farmers were found either very close to FFS or better to some extent meaning that community IPM has come into effect to some extent.