CONVENTIONAL AGRICULTURAL-DEVELOPMENT MODELS AND THE PERSISTENCE OF THE PESTICIDE TREADMILL IN LATIN-AMERICA

After a brief history of pesticide use and impacts in Latin America, t he paper analyzes how agricultural development programmes, from the Gr een Revolution to the promotion of non-traditional export crops, have perpetuated the pesticide treadmill in the region. A fundamental issue in the paper is to link the pesticide problem to the broader policy, institutional socio-economic and technical changes that must occur if agriculture is to be ecologically sound, economically viable and socia lly just. By using several examples of biological control and integrat ed pest management programmes as case studies, ways of promoting the t ransition of chemical intensive commercial agriculture to a more susta inable and low-external input agriculture are explored. In the policy realm, a series of requirements and incentives to initiate change towa rds ecological pest management are suggested, including: changing the political-economic structures, countering pressures from the agrochemi cal industry, disseminating IPM among farmers, broadening education an d outreach in IPM.