Eliciting farmer knowledge, attitudes, and practices in the development of integrated pest management programs for rice in Asia

Abstract

Much IPM technology for rice has been developed at research stations in Asia but on the balance little of it has been adopted by farmers who find many of the recommendations inappropriate. The farmer field school training method has made valuable inroads in overcoming this problem in that it has found that farmers value group learning and conducting farmer-led research which provides both knowledge and gives the farmers tools to fine tune technologies. For more effective training programs, extension worker and researcher team members need to better understand farmers' knowledge, attitudes, and practices. Anthropologists have developed methods to elicit ethno-scientific cultural subjective norms and perceptions from farmers which are discussed and complemented by surveys as well as other methods developed by rural sociologists and IPM practitioners.