Los Baños, Philippines
May 22, 2002

An innovative campaign that promises to help protect a million rice farmers in the Red River Delta of Vietnam from the harmful effects of dangerous insecticides has won one of the world's major environmental prizes. The campaign - which will be jointly advanced by a team of Philippine and Vietnamese scientists - will build on a groundbreaking effort that has sharply reduced pesticide misuse in Vietnam's Mekong Delta.

The collaborative effort, led by K.L. Heong, a senior entomologist at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), M.M. Escalada, a communications professor at the Philippine's Leyte State University, and Nguyen Huu Huan, the vice director general of Vietnam's Plant Protection Department, received the $25,000 Saint Andrews' Environmental Prize earlier this month at a ceremony in Scotland.

First launched in 1994 in the Mekong Delta - long one of the great rice bowls of Asia - the research and subsequent campaign marked a milestone in rice production for two reasons. Firstly, it clearly identified the damage caused by the overuse of insecticides, which kills off friendly insects and so encourages the pests they would otherwise help control, and it also developed a completely new way of communicating important information to farmers.

After testing their campaign in the Mekong Delta, where almost 2 million rice growers were persuaded to cut back on using harmful and unnecessary farm chemicals, the research partners launched, on World Environment Day last June, a similar, on-going campaign in northern Thailand's Sing Buri Province. Now they will use the Saint Andrews' prize money to extend the campaign to another million rice farmers in the Red River Delta. In announcing the winners, Sir Crispin Tickell, the chairman of the St Andrews' Prize Board of Trustees, said: "In the end we decided to give the prize to a proposal of obvious and lasting benefit to millions of people which could and should be a model for others: the cultivation of rice by methods which combine the benefits of the old and the new, and avoid the hazards which have so damaged rice and other cultivation of grains worldwide."

Research has found that many insecticide sprays applied by Asian rice farmers are unnecessary because they are applied at the wrong time and to the wrong targets. In addition, many of the chemicals used, such as methyl parathion, monocrotophos and metamidophos, are highly hazardous to human health and so are banned in the developed world.

These sprays disrupt natural biological control mechanisms - nature's "immune system" - and thereby create an environment favorable to ecologically fitter pest species. This prompts farmers to spray even more late in the season. Not only can farmers become victims of pesticide poisoning, but sprays can damage aquatic fauna, reducing fish and prawn cultures, and cause broad damage to the local environment.

The research team found that most farmers in Vietnam and elsewhere spray in the early crop stages because of highly visible leaf damage caused by caterpillars, beetles and grasshoppers. However, many of the modern rice varieties farmers grow today have built-in insect resistance and generally do not require pest control. The project team realized that this overuse and incorrect spraying of insecticides was due to years of aggressive pesticide advertising and marketing that played to farmers' often misplaced fears.

"What appeared to motivate farmers to spray insecticides during the early stages were misconceptions, lack of knowledge and biased estimations of losses due to pests," Dr. Heong explained. "But we found that the amount rice farmers expected to lose if no insecticides were applied was about 13 times higher than the actual losses. "So we set out to find ways to change the attitudes of farmers and motivate them to spray less," Dr. Heong said.

The research group quickly realized that a primary source of information for farmers was local radio broadcasts. From then on, the ever-present farmer radios were at the heart of a media campaign that, in its first six years, had a profound impact on the use of insecticides in the Mekong Delta.

"We got a group of actors to play out a series of brief comedies, using rustic situations and solid scientific facts to make the audience laugh," Dr. Heong explained. "We were then very pleasantly surprised to find these simple, humorous messages fixed themselves in the minds of thousands of
farmers."

Such was the success of the campaign that 15 provincial administrations  throughout the Mekong Delta and beyond adopted the radio and poster strategy. "It was all based on the premise that farmers' perceptions, rather than economic rationale, were used in most pest-management decisions," Dr. Heong said.

The radio dramas, supported by leaflets and posters, were first aired in Long An Province in 1994. Research had shown that spraying in the first 40 days after sowing was not necessary, so farmers were told it was a waste of money. They were encouraged to see for themselves with a simple experiment, spraying only part of their crop and comparing the yield from the sprayed and unsprayed portions.

The effects were soon obvious, and by 1997 the campaign had been picked up by 11 other provincial governments and was reaching about 92 percent of the Mekong Delta's 2.3 million farm households. The results became clear with the analysis in 1999 of intensive surveys.

Insecticide use had fallen from an average of 3.4 applications per farmer per season, to just one - a decrease of 72 percent. The number of farmers who believed that insecticides would bring higher yields had fallen from 83 percent to 13 percent. The number who realized that insecticides killed the natural enemies of rice pests, as well as the pests themselves, had risen from 29 percent to 79 percent.

At the same time, the gross paddy output of the Mekong Delta increased from 11 million to 14 million tons per year. Dr. Heong believes that insecticide use can be further reduced by half without affecting rice production. But he and his research partners also fear that insecticide use will creep up again
if the campaign is allowed to lapse.

"The only information most farmers get is advice from chemical companies to use more sprays," Dr. Heong says. "They think that every dollar they spend on insecticide is going to mean about 13 dollars in their pockets at harvest time. In fact, that far exceeds reality. Even in a worst-case scenario - a seriously damaging pest infestation - they might benefit by only four dollars from one dollar spent, and the worst-case scenario is a rare event.

"We should be training people to communicate, to deliver information to the farmers and motivate them to evaluate the new information objectively," Dr. Heong concluded. "In this way, they can improve their knowledge and, at the same time, learn new values. And, with the money we have received from the St. Andrews Environmental Prize, we will now be able to not only continue this important work but also extend its impact to the benefit of many more rice farmers."

IRRI is the world's leading international rice research and training center. Based in the Philippines and with offices in 11 other countries, it is an autonomous, nonprofit institution focused on improving the well-being of present and future generations of rice farmers and consumers, particularly those with low incomes, while preserving natural resources. IRRI is one of 16 Future Harvest centers funded the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), an association of public and private donor agencies.

Future Harvest is a nonprofit organization that builds awareness and supports food and environmental research for a world with less poverty, a healthier human family, well-nourished children, and a better environment. Future Harvest supports research, promotes partnerships, and sponsors projects that bring the results of agricultural research to rural communities, farmers, and families in Africa, Latin
America, and Asia.