[EBOOK] THE FOOD SPRAY MANUAL (Using the Food Spray Method to Enhance Biological Control in Cotton: A Trainers’ Guide), Stephanie Williamson with Robert Mensah, Published by PAN UK (Pesticide Action Network UK)

Cotton is a tricky crop to grow and is notoriously pest-prone - a bad pest attack can devastate a crop. Many farmers rely on synthetic insecticides to control pests but these come with their own problems. Pesticide poisoning is rife: the World Health Organization estimates that around 3% of farmworkers experience at least one pesticide poisoning episode each year. This is almost certainly an underestimate. Surveys conducted by PAN UK in cotton growing areas of Africa and central Asia have uncovered poisoning rates of 30% or more. These poisonings can result in serious illnesses, and sadly, deaths from pesticide poisoning are not uncommon.

The financial burden is also significant. The UN Environment Programme estimated that, the costs of injury due to pesticide poisoning in sub-Saharan Africa in 2009 were around USD $6.2 billion - more than the total aid budget for basic health care in the region. What is more. UNEP forecast that between 2015 and 2020 these costs will total more than USDS90billion. This is an enormous economic burden. The direct costs of pesticides are also large with many smallholder farmers spending half of their income on chemical inputs. Reducing reliance on pesticides makes sense from a health, environmental and economic perspective

Luckily there is an alternative: Integrated Pest Management (IPM) - working with nature to keep pest levels down and using pesticides as a last resort - has been shown again and again to be an effective and economic way of controlling pests.

I PM is a collection of approaches and its principles are deceptively simple: grow a healthy crop, use pest resistant crop varieties and deploy practices like crop rotations and good crop husbandry to prevent pest outbreaks. One key IPM approach is to use beneficial insects to keep populations of pest species down. Farmers can deploy various techniques such as planting companion crops to provide habitat to keep levels of beneficial insects high.

Ten years ago. PAN UK began working with I PM expert Robert Mensah to develop a food spray, using cheap and locally available materials, to enhance populations of beneficial insects in smallholder cotton fields in Africa. Building on his pioneering work in Australia, and working closely with Davo Vodouhe and his team at OBEPAB in Benin. Robert conducted field trials and experiments in farmer's fields to come up with a product that not only worked, but that farmers were comfortable using.

By the end of 2012. nearly 2.000 smallholder farmers in Benin were actively using the food spray technique as part of their IPM programme. Their pesticide use (and costs) plummeted, while their yields remained comparable with conventional growers. In 2013, PAN UK and Robert took the technology to Ethiopia. This manual is the result of this project - working with PAN Ethiopia, we carefully recorded every step of the process to capture key lessons and understand how to integrate the approach into farmer training programmes.
Today, thousands of cotton farmers are successfully using the food spray as part of their IPM systems. This manual is designed to allow hundreds of thousands more to benefit from the technology. It is aimed at sustainable cotton initiatives, project managers, extension agents, field trainers - anyone working with cotton growers world-wide. It guides trainers through each stage with helpful tips and advice from Robert, along with warnings of common problems and pitfalls. But a word of warning: The food spray is not a magic bullet. It is designed to work as part of an effective I PM system. It complements - not replaces - other IPM techniques and will only work if farmers are well trained and supported. That said, our experience has shown that the food spray is a valuable tool to control various cotton pests.

Keith Tyrell

Director, PAN UK keith@pan-uk.org.uk

[EBOOK] THE FOOD SPRAY MANUAL (Using the Food Spray Method to Enhance Biological Control in Cotton: A Trainers’ Guide), Stephanie Williamson with Robert Mensah, Published by PAN UK (Pesticide Action Network UK)

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