Rice systems, like virtually all agricultural systems, are changing, most becoming far more mechanised in recent years. Such changes can influence pest management in a number of ways - by increasing the favourability or susceptibility of the crop to pest attack, by changing the effectiveness of control measures, or by altering farmers' objectives.
Agricultural development can be viewed as a dynamic process. Its direction depends on the pressures exerted by a range of factors, including government policy initiatives (e.g. subsidies, guaranteed prices and regulations), economic forces and market demand, and technological change and adoption. The adoption of certain technologies can also lead to the adoption of other, complementary technologies (Crouch, 1981), pushing the farmer along a particular development path, which may lead to increasing pest problems, affect the ability of farmers to control them and lead to a change in the need for information and knowledge on pests and their control.
To give an example, agricultural policy in Malaysia has included providing a guaranteed price for rice, subsidized fertilizers and investment in irrigation schemes. The net effect of this has been to increase the ability and incentive of farmers to improve rice production while, at the same time, reducing the risks of adopting the necessary technology. These factors, along with others, notably the increasing shortage of rural labour, have contributed towards the dramatic changes in rice production practices in the major rice growing area of Muda, resulting in changes in the agroecological features of the crop and in the status of a number of rice pests.
There are two practical implications we can draw from the effect that these agricultural development can have on pest problems and pest control. First, but by far the most difficult to implement, is the idea that we can attempt to divert agricultural development along a different pathway, that has less, long-term, disruptive effects (e.g. synchronised planting and harvesting providing crop free periods). The second implication is associated with the inevitable time lag between the initiation of research and the implementation of its results. If the research we are doing today is to be directed towards producing relevant information and appropriate technology for the problem situation that rice farmers will face in the future, we first need to predict the direction of these future changes and then plan our research to address this situation.
Historical profiles provide one means of systematically pulling together relevant information on system development and stimulating ideas on likely development scenarios and their implications for future pest management problems. A major feature associated with many development pathways is the loss of flexibility that can occur, resulting in one particular type of development becoming locked-in. This is the subject of the next key concept.