• “If the same results were applied acrossIn Kenya, farmers incomes would more than double and the gains for Kenya’s four million farmers would total $2.7 billion.” Greenpeace Africa, 2015
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Growing rice by the Sustainable Rice Intensification method in Cambodia; hand weeding between the widely spaced plants. CEDAC
Economic analysis thus shows that investments would achieve more for farmers and the national economies if redirected to assisting farmers to implement agroecology. Summary from case studies Additionally, a number of case studies reported in this book show greater profitability for agroecological than conventional farmers. For example: •
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Sustainable Rice Intensification (SRI) showed net income increases across Asia of between 59 and 773 percent. Agroecological practices on a large number of farms in the Philippines returned net incomes on average 50 percent higher than conventional farms, making the difference between a profit and a loss. Community Managed Sustainable Agriculture in Andhra Pradesh, India showed significant net income increases, with yields much the same but costs of pest management dropping by 70-80 percent.
164 Curtis 2015, op cit.
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Kerala, India, the increased yields and decreased pest management costs in agroecological rice growing resulted in increased net incomes. A rice-duck cultivation system in China returned increases of US $323.52/ha compared with conventional rice; for organic growers that increase rose to US $6,478.2/ha.
3.3 Pesticide reduction Reducing the adverse effects of pesticides on human health and the environment is a key concern of all – from farmers to NGOs, from governments to international agencies such as FAO, WHO and UNEP. Reducing use of pesticides – and especially HHPs – is the most effective way to achieve this goal. So one important measure of the benefits of agroecology is the degree to which it reduces pesticide use. In the Greenpeace study164 on using the push-pull technology for weed and pest management in maize growing in Kenya, there was a 100 percent decrease in pesticide use, compared with farmers not using this technique. West Africa FAO’s West African Regional Integrated Production and Pest Management Programme (IPPM) was established in four countries to “improve farming skills and raise smallholder farmers’ awareness of alternatives to toxic chemicals”, using Farmer Field