Nelly Bassily | August 27, 2012
In this week’s story from Cameroon, a farmer successfully used a natural pesticide. But the question remains for many farmers: can you control pests without using chemical pesticides? This series of eight radio spots, distributed by Farm Radio International in 2004, tries to answer that question.
It discusses some of the agronomical problems with using chemical pesticides, such as pests developing resistance to pesticides, and the fact that many pesticides kill “good” as well as “bad” (pest) insects. To avoid these problems, farmers can use alternatives to pesticides and implement more than one pest management practice at a time. Methods such as crop rotation, intercropping, and hand-picking insects are all effective techniques in crop protection. If one method fails, others will keep working. These eight spots highlight some of the problems of using chemical pesticides, and offer possible alternatives.
http://www.farmradio.org/english/radio-scripts/72-3script_en.asp