Future Steps

We hope and expect that farmers will wish to continue using the M. vitrata pheromone traps. The challenge is to find long-term, sustainable method of supplying the traps and lures.  In the short-term farmers can fabricate traps themselves and a possible supply route for the lures could be through one or more of the project’s institutional partners, following purchase from the UK supplier. However, project surveys indicate that in the longer-term farmers wish to purchase traps, lures and botanical pesticides through local, existing agricultural input providers. The farmers who have participated in the project could form the initial, core market for these providers with future expansion if the technology is taken up more widely. The following is a digest of suggestions for a further phase of work developed by working groups at a project workshop held at Cotonou in December 2005, attended by representatives of project partners and some other interested institutions. The suggestions centre around perceived constraints to implementation of Maruca pheromone traps can be grouped into three areas: technical, socio-economic and policy related. These together with a summary of possible remedial actions to be undertaken in a further phase are given below.

Technical Constraints 

Insufficient Capacity within Extension Services

Increasing the capacity of local extensions agents (National programmes and partner organisations) for interacting with farmers to disseminate the trapping and botanical technologies would greatly assist their further uptake at the farm level. There could be an initial training-of-trainers activity, one per country, during which as many individual extension agents as possible are trained in the technologies.  These would then go on to train lead-farmers in their respective areas, with these farmers in turn passing on the message to their peers. Training farmers to avoid mis-identification of Maruca in the traps would be one specific objective but more generally the instruction would concern how to use the traps and the rationale underlying their use. The scale of this training would depend on available budgets; verification and validation of the secondary level training would need to be carried out.  Suggestions were that training could build on or complement similar activities in other, related sectors e.g. cotton in northern Benin, vegetables in the transition zone of Ghana.  Such projects or initiatives remain to be identified.

Specific output: increased capacity of local extension agents to disseminate trapping technology.

Efficacy of traps in areas of high population pressure

Traps do not seem to work in certain geographical locations, specifically northern Nigeria and parts of Burkina Faso.  These are areas typically having particularly high Maruca populations or infestations. Clearly investigation of this can be considered basic research.  One idea might be that high densities of females effectively out-compete the traps for captures of males. Aspects to consider might be re-investigation of different blends in various locations, behaviour of the insect, influence of cowpea variety, physiological factors, climatic factors, particularly temperature extremes (re-examine effect of exposure and shielding, increase lure dose at Kano, Burkina), modification of trap design to minimise accidental trap captures.

Specific output: an improved, cheap, durable, effective trap for Kano and Burkina, with improvement through farmer participation where appropriate.

Need for further innovations to control Maruca

More generally two new areas for research are:

• NPV for Maruca – identified from Taiwan recently, initial testing at IITA in 2006

• Bt cowpea – still at development stage in US, on-station trials not expected until 2007/8 and at farm level later still

Neither of these could be picked up by DFID's upcoming Research into Use programme but eventually funds from the expected geographical – sustainable agriculture programmes might play a role.

Socio-Economic Constraints

Costs and availability of lures and traps

This constraint has previously been repeatedly articulated by farmers and project partner organisations.  There are two approaches to solving the lure availability problem. Firstly, strong and durable links are developed between the Europe-based manufacturers and local institutions – probably NGOs – whereby the latter sell lures directly or through farmer organisations to farmers. The selling price of the lure to farmers would be at a cost-recovery price. Eventually, in this scenario, lure distribution is taken over by the private sector. The alternative approach is to try to develop lure production in Ghana, with local sales from there. If a potential private sector supplier can be found, funds would be made available to invest in equipment or initial purchase of materials. To determine the best approach an economic feasibility study could be undertaken at an early stage in the project, looking at possible future demand and likely profit margins. In addition, revolving funds to farm organisations or a rural bank (even IITA) would be made to facilitate purchasing lures by farmers.  Certain guarantees would need to be obtained to ensure proper use of such monies. For manufacture of traps, the producers of the plastic cans from which traps are made would be approached with a view to them making the cans already with the side windows already cut-out.

Specific output: sustainable and affordable system of lure and trap production developed. Labour of botanical production

This is another previously well-articulated constraint: farmers want to be able to buy botanical pesticides off the shelf and not go to the labour of producing them themselves.  Previous ideas about the mechanisation of botanical production need to be pursued further:

• Mills have been developed by/with SARI in Tamale;

• GOAN notes that CRIG already have a substantial supply of neem seeds in place for use with their organic cocoa initiative;

• The Songhai (Organic) centre in Cotonou may be able to assist or advise.

These alternatives could be evaluated and a feasibility study conducted if appropriate.

Specific output: local sustainable and affordable system of botanical production developed.

Perception of the benefits of this technology relative to others

Two actions are suggested under this constraint:

• Compare the benefits of pheromone traps relative to other technologies;

• Train farmers so that they can do simple budgeting to allow farmer to make informed decisions about pest control practices.

Both of these could be handled within the framework of farmer training by extension agents – see first output.

Market volume or premium insufficient for ‘biological’ cowpea

Currently the market demand for cowpea produced with reduced-pesticide inputs is effectively non-existent (a small initiative is known from NW Ghana where cowpea is for export use to make baby-food).  Farmers themselves are aware of the safety/health/residue issues and will often eat only botanically-sprayed cowpea, whilst sending conventionally-sprayed crops to local markets. Wide-scale promotion of biological cowpea through, for example, developing consumer awareness in partnership with consumer associations may not be within the scope of a new project. However, measures such as contacting TechnoServe again about the organic cowpea farmers in Ghana, exploring the possibility of certification of biological cowpea (see below) and an ex-ante assessment the ‘willingness to pay’ by consumers, may help to create a favourable environment for later adoption.

Specific output: market study for biological cowpea, including possibility of official certification to improve market appeal/credibility.

Policy Constraints

Partnerships

• Need for Traceability of Biologically treated products – to develop such a scheme would need the involvement of Public sector organisations we need to consider what similar schemes already exist for tracing product origins (consider the NRI warehouse receipts idea).  Separate IITA (Coulibaly) project may look at traceability aspects.

• Strong partnerships between public and private sectors (DIFOV, PPRSD, EPA, MoFA, CNAC, SIR) are needed to inform them of technology availability – activities could include stakeholder workshops to which directors, policy makers would be invited (1-day in each country)

• We need to empower NGOs for diffusion of biologically based pest management technologies – covered under capacity development output above

Competition with pesticides

The output under this heading needs to be framed as improving farmers’ awareness and reducing reliance on chemical pesticides. Comparisons with conventional pesticides, perceptions of traps and botanicals can be activities for the improved extension capacities where the pros and cons of different technologies are explored.  We need to be aware of/prepared for possible conflict with the pesticide industry. More generally we can create awareness/information systems for all stakeholders through increased use of the media, talk shows, rural radio, farmer field days and demonstration plots, printed materials (we can use existing posters, leaflets and the training video but need more copies, further translations etc).

Regulations and registrations (quality standards)

We should monitor on-going developments in the regulatory and registration standards at national and regional levels and should aim to register one or more pheromone and botanical products as output of new project as a project output. Some form of regular sampling and analysis for quality control of bio – products would need to accompany this – can we try to encourage a long-term system of such monitoring (perhaps working with GSB, EPA and CEBENOR)? The issue of pesticide residues is a serious one and it is not clear that it is ever checked under existing systems. Could we make some form of analytical comparisons between cowpea produced under the two systems a specific activity of the project?