Abstract only

IITA has a long experience with biological control in Africa. Since the widely publicized success of the Africa-wide biological control of the cassava mealybug, successful classical biological control projects have been undertaken with the same partners against the mango mealy bug, the cassava green mite, and water hyacinth. The four projects documented the impacts of the introduced, exotic natural enemies on the invading pest species and the food web consisting of indigenous species. In a second step, the impact on crop production and the amount of crop loss avoided through biological controls were quantified and translated into economic gains for farmers and/ or consumers. In a fifth project, an indigenous entomophagous fungus of locusts and grasshoppers was developed into a commercially available mycopesticide, and the economic viability of the product was evaluated both in terms of avoidance of crop loss as well as environmental and health hazards, compared to the usual insecticide treatments. These projects form the centerpieces of successful integrated pest management (IPM) projects.|The search for natural enemies in the original home of the pests, as well as their importation, rearing, release and monitoring, was financed by donor agencies. All activities in Africa were executed in collaboration with the national quarantine and research organizations, which were prepared for releases and monitoring through workshops and conferences, and who participated as full scientific collaborators. This left a cadre of well-educated scientists capable of collaborating in subsequent projects, executing projects on their own, and influencing public opinion. In each case, collaboration between entomologists, pathologists, and economists proved highly fruitful and the ex-post economic analysis revealed high returns on investment by the donors, with direct impact at the farm level. Benefits to the environment (compared to pesticide treatments) is usually documented with anecdotal evidence, but not calculated in monetary terms. Similarly, national programs benefited in terms of human resources, capital, and capacity building, but these impacts were not systematically analyzed.||This paper first presents an overview of the ex-post economic analyses of the different projects and a synthesis of the ecological impacts, and is a first attempt to quantify the impact on national programs. It then analyses how the documentation of those impacts influenced decision-making in research and the development of pest management. It is argued that the importance of biological control is now widely felt within the national and international research community, but that it did not have the same impact on the general public, political decision makers and, especially, the donor community. Though the documented biological control projects present very sustainable solutions and are clearly highly profitable, their profile with donor agencies is rather low. Some of the reasons presented here are the lack of guarantee for a sustainable solution from the outset, the long timeframe required, the limited potential for collaboration with the private sector, and the lack of visibility and related poor public awareness. For these reasons, biological control and IPM are often not given their share of recognition within the CGIAR system and the donor community.||It is therefore recommended that biological control and IPM projects include an impact assessment component from the beginning. This will help to guide the development of the technology and document the potential impacts from the start. Furthermore, effort is needed to bring the impact of biological control to the attention of the general public and the donor community.

Socioeconomics Program

English

0309|R01CIMPU|AGRIS 0301|AL-Economics Program

Juan Carlos Mendieta

INT2512

CIMMYT Staff Publications Collection