http://ricehoppers.net/2008/12/planthoppers-%e2%80%93-potential-threats-to-the-sustainability-of-intensive-rice-systems/ Fri, 06 Jan 2012 01:28:03 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 http://ricehoppers.net/2008/12/planthoppers-%e2%80%93-potential-threats-to-the-sustainability-of-intensive-rice-systems/comment-page-1/#comment-25 Does scientific research impact plant protection policy and institutional decisions? « Mon, 02 Mar 2009 11:51:27 +0000 http://ricehoppers.net/?p=148#comment-25 [...] Plant protection services were established to “protect” crops from pests based on the goals of the 1960s and 1970s when food production was the main objective. Typically plant protection services are structured like fire brigade services, equipped for rapid and mass control. The Tien Giang provincial government for instance would stock enough insecticides to spray 30% of the agricultural production area for emergency mass controls. While there have been numerous papers, discussions, seminars and conferences calling for change in plant protection services to meet the challenges of new pest management environments, these services in Vietnam and indeed in many Asian countries, have remained quite the same. Thus decisions based procedural rationality are limited to mass controls. While such strategies might be useful for some pests, they are ineffective for managing insecticide induced pests, such as the planthoppers, and tend to make the situations worse. Valuable ecosystem services are destroyed rendering rice ecosystems vulnerable to planthopper invasions and weak abilities to regulate hoppers that succeed in establishing. Read related post here. [...] [...] Plant protection services were established to “protect” crops from pests based on the goals of the 1960s and 1970s when food production was the main objective. Typically plant protection services are structured like fire brigade services, equipped for rapid and mass control. The Tien Giang provincial government for instance would stock enough insecticides to spray 30% of the agricultural production area for emergency mass controls. While there have been numerous papers, discussions, seminars and conferences calling for change in plant protection services to meet the challenges of new pest management environments, these services in Vietnam and indeed in many Asian countries, have remained quite the same. Thus decisions based procedural rationality are limited to mass controls. While such strategies might be useful for some pests, they are ineffective for managing insecticide induced pests, such as the planthoppers, and tend to make the situations worse. Valuable ecosystem services are destroyed rendering rice ecosystems vulnerable to planthopper invasions and weak abilities to regulate hoppers that succeed in establishing. Read related post here. [...]

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