From Integrated Pest Management to Indiscriminate Pesticide Use in Kazakhstan

Abstract

This paper explores a strange paradox. After the fall of the Soviet system, Kazakhstan became strongly incorporated in a world that highly values sustainable agriculture and ecologically-friendly pest control. In this incorporation process, however, the country abandoned a well-established integrated pest management (IPM) system and shifted to an exclusive reliance on pesticides. This study analyses the development of IPM/ecology-based pest-control approaches in the 1970s and 1980s in the USSR, providing some detailed case studies in the Republic of Kazakhstan. It examines how these sustainable approaches to pest control were replaced by an indiscriminate pesticide use in farming practices after independence in 1991. The focus of plant protection research also shifted from IPM/ecology-based studies to pesticide testing. The paper reveals that the nature of institutional support from the state shapes the rise and fall of IPM, particularly since it is crucial for addressing the knowledge-intensive character of IPM and governing situations in which concerted action is needed.

Keywords:

• plant protection
• IPM
• pesticide
• knowledge
• institutional support
• soviet union
• kazakhstan

Notes

1. Another implicit reason for the wide-scale use of the IPM approach in the Soviet Union apart from the explicit claims about health and environmental concerns was to reduce dependence on pesticides imported from Western countries.

2. The Alma-Ata region occupied 105,210 square kilometres before 1991. It consisted of 11 administrative districts with 136 Soviet collective farms. The total cropping area was 839,556 ha.

3. The Kazakh SSR (Soviet Socialist Republic) (Kazakhstan) was one of the 15 republics of the former USSR.

4. Bajwa and Kogan (2002:14) define IPM as follows: “Integrated Pest Management (IPM) for agriculture is the application of an interconnected set of principles and methods to problems caused by insects, diseases, weeds and other agricultural pests. IPM includes pest prevention techniques, pest monitoring methods, biological control, pest-resistant plants varieties, pest attractants and repellents, biopesticides, and synthetic organic pesticides. It also involves the use of weather data to predict the onset of pest attack, and cultural practices such as rotation, mulching, raised planting beds, narrow plant rows, and interseeding.”

5. In this paper, an agricultural pest is defined broadly, as a living organism (rodent, insect, mite, nematode, fungus, bacterium, virus or weed) that damages crops, affects crop development or reduces quantity and quality of yield before or after harvest. The terms ‘agricultural pest,’ ‘pest organism,’ and ‘pest’ will be used interchangeably.

6. This journal was a forum for discussion of plant protection issues of interest to plant protection practitioners, researchers and policymakers.

7. Cuba still has 280 centres for producing entomophages and entomopathogens and some 700,000 ha of crops are biologically treated (Van Lenteren and Bueno, 2003:132).

8. Here ‘biological control’ refers to the control of agricultural pests by living organisms (insects, mites, nematodes, fungi, bacteria, viruses) or with products of their metabolism.

9. Biological laboratory reared beneficial arthropods and produced bio-pesticides based on entomopathogenic microorganisms.

10. Field crops: cabbages, red beets, alfalfa, maize, soybeans, tobacco, potatoes, tomatoes, carrots and peppers.

11. In the original paper Dysart (1973:173) used the term ‘parasites.’ Since Trichogramma is an egg-parasitoid the term ‘parasites’ has been changed to ‘parasitoids’ in the quotation to avoid confusion.

12. Here ‘bio-pesticide’ is a preparation made from entomopathogenic microorganisms or products of their metabolism.

13. In preparing this paper it was startling to find that there has been hardly any published research on pesticide use by farmers in post-1991 Kazakhstan in either Kazakh, Russian or English.

14. Fipronil—a hazardous pesticide (Class II) according to the WHO Pesticide Classification List. It is legally only allowed to be used in Kazakhstan as a measure against locusts in non-cropping areas.

15. This farmer even mentioned that he used the banned DDT (Dichloro-Diphenyl-Trichloroethane) obtained from a black market.

16. The USSR imported up to 50% of the pesticides it required with the other half being domestically produced.

17. ‘Candidate of Sciences’—scientific degree in the former USSR, which is still in use in Russia and Kazakhstan and can be placed between M.Sc. and Ph.D. of western academia. Some equate this degree to western Ph.D., but after pursuing Candidate of Sciences degree one need another 4 to 5 or more years to pursue ‘Doctor of Sciences’ degree that equal to Ph.D. degree of western academia.