Agriculture and Environment: Bananas

Better Management Practices: IPMs to Reduce Pesticide Use

There are several ways to reduce pesticide pollution by limiting the movement of these chemicals.

However, the most effective way to reduce environmental contamination from harmful chemicals is to minimise the amount of the chemical that is applied.

Avoiding preventative applications
Currently, insecticide and nematicide applications are used as prophylactics, on a preventative basis. The introduction of a monitoring program would allow producers to apply chemicals only at those times when potential damage would justify the control measures.

Educating all stakeholders
An important aspect of any integrated pest management program is that the workers as well as the owners be educated about the problems of pesticide use and its alternatives.

In fact, the education of people who use pesticides directly is one of the most effective ways to reduce total use. Through such programs, owners and workers both can begin to change their attitudes about the management and use of chemicals.

Examples of Chiquita & Octavio Cuevas
Chiquita reportedly has successfully employed IPM techniques that have reduced nematicide applications by half on 20,000 hectares of plantations (Rainforest Alliance 2000). However, the story is not totally in the numbers. Octavio Cuevas, a manager of 3,500 hectares of bananas in Colombia, is a good example.

Two years ago, he believed that he needed chemicals to prevent insects from eating his plants and weeds from taking over the plantations. Now the farms he controls have nearly eliminated all classes of agrochemicals except fungicides. The ground is matted with vegetation that holds the soil and protects it from the elements.

Butterfly larvae make latticework of banana leaves (without causing significant harm to yields), and frog larvae abound in the chemical-free canals. Weeds are controlled by hand, and experiments are underway to replace fertiliser with chicken manure. Meanwhile the banana production is setting records and the chemical bill is declining (Rainforest Alliance 2000).

Research needs to be undertaken on IPM specific to banana production. In this way, the most toxic chemicals could be targeted for reduced use or elimination altogether so that what is used is both more effective and less damaging. The successful use of bokashi and fermented organic matter at EARTH University suggests that it is increasingly possible and financially feasible to produce bananas with non-toxic forms of pest control.