Pesticide Use and Experiences with Integrated Pest Management Programs and Bt Cotton in India

Abstract

In India, agricultural productivity of food and other crops has grown tremendously since the advent of the Green Revolution. Pesticides have been one of the drivers behind this growth in combination with high-yielding varieties and increased irrigation and fertilization. Pesticide use increased from 10,993 metric tons in the mid-1960s to approximately 80,000 metric tons in the 1990s. Half was used on cotton, although cotton is grown on only 8 % (ca. 11.6 million ha) of the cultivated area. American-bollworm–susceptible, high-yielding cultivars introduced to cater to the needs of the mechanized spinning mills increased the pest problem and pesticide use on cotton. Pesticide use was also high on vegetable and rice crops. Crop losses from pests, however, increased by 16 %, and many pests developed resistance to the pesticides. This resistance, rather than environmental concerns, led to the birth of integrated pest management (IPM) in India for rice and cotton crops in 1974–1975, and vegetables and other crops since the 1990s, reducing pesticide use in the project areas. In the 1970s and 1980s, the first IPM program under the Operational Reseach Project (ORP) focused on pilot programs using a prescriptive approach to demonstrate IPM practices in cotton and rice crops in a cluster of villages in seven states. The government of India adopted IPM as the main strategy for plant protection in 1985. In the early 1990s, the farmer field school (FFS) model was adopted to implement IPM by educating farmers and extension workers. Between 1990 (before many ad hoc IPM programs began) and 2002 (when Bt cotton was introduced) pesticide use (a.i.) by weight decreased by 35 %, mainly because hexachlorocyclohexane, accounting for 30 % of the total pesticides, was banned in 1997 and low-dosage pesticides were introduced. Only about 2–4 % of the total cultivated area, including only 5 % of the farmers, however, is covered under IPM programs, so whether IPM has reduced overall pesticide use in Indian agriculture is debatable. Although the introduction of Bt cotton has reduced insecticide use in cotton by almost 50 %, mass pesticide use in Indian agriculture overall has increased by 9 % since 2002.