K. M. Maredia, D. Dakouo, and D. Mota-Sanchez
CABI Publishing, Wallingford, U.K., and Cambridge, MA
2003, 512 pages
Price: $149, hard cover
ISBN: 0-85199-652-3
 

Integrated Pest Management in the Global Arena is a large book of 39 contributed chapters and more than 500 pages of text. Despite the wide range of topics and the numerous contributing authors, the book is generally well written and worth reading in its entirety or piecemeal by focusing on specific topics.

The book has four sections. Part 1 includes eight chapters discussing a wide range of emerging issues in IPM. The largest section of the book, with 20 chapters, is the second part, which details experiences in individual countries. Large geographic regions are grouped together by similarities in climate and sociopolitical factors. The third part describes the IPM experiences of different international agencies working to promote and develop IPM. Part 4 brings the diverse topics set out in the prior chapters to a conclusion and includes recommendations for promoting the global success of IPM. As might be expected given the number of programs and agencies discussed, a lot of jargon and acronyms are used throughout the book. Fortunately, the editors include in the front of the book a nearly complete glossary of acronyms and abbreviations.

Part 1 of the book, dealing with issues in IPM, is not designed to be a stand-alone text on the topic. However, it does give a good overview of issues ranging from biological control to biotechnology and introduces the importance of policy change and sustainable development to the success of IPM. A major contribution in this section, and in the rest of the book, is the attention paid to social, political, and gender issues. The point is made that IPM technologies, no matter what their potential for effective pest management, often fail unless they have relevance to the accompanying social structures of the end users and consumers. These are topics not generally covered in other IPM books.

The experiences of the different countries reported in Part 2 were extremely varied. Most of the chapters in this section provide an overview of the political and environmental conditions prior to adopting IPM and of the issues that resulted in a change in policy from promoting pesticide use to a more balanced IPM policy.

Although the need for effective pest management was a common factor leading to the adoption of IPM policy and programs, it was often not the sole or even major motivation. For example, in Indonesia, pest issues in rice production threatened rice self-sufficiency. In the Philippines, farm profitability was a goal; and for several West African nations, reducing the cost of off-farm purchased inputs for agricultural production motivated a move to IPM. Although the situation in each country was unique and each country’s motivation for adapting IPM was specific, there was a common need for policy change and attention to social structure. In most locations, IPM adoption relied on some variation of farmer field schools to build support for the new technologies.

On reading the third section, I was struck by how bureaucratic many of the international programs dealing with IPM are. Despite this, international organizations have made progress in promoting and building IPM capacity around the world. A number of the agencies are not interested in IPM as a stand-alone program, but see IPM as critical to their mission of promoting sustainable agricultural and social systems in their host countries.

The final chapter and last section of the book summarizes and highlights the commonalities of the preceding chapters and very briefly concludes by introducing some of the trends and challenges that need to be addressed before IPM is globally adopted.

This book should be a welcome reference for researchers and extension personnel across disciplines, as well as for policy makers in government and nongovernment organizations working to promote IPM and sustainable agriculture. The reader can select any chapter and find a relevant discussion of IPM. As someone who teaches an IPM class, I found several new ideas and novel presentations of concepts that I will include in my lectures.

Gary J. Brewer
Department of Entomology
North Dakota State University
Fargo, ND 58105
gary.brewer@ndsu.edu
American Entomologist
Vol. 51, No.3, Fall 2005