Implementation of rodent management in intensive irrigated rice production systems in Indonesia and Vietnam

The project is progressing according to plan and on track to meeting all milestones.

Project start-up workshops in Vietnam (Ho Chi Minh City, 14-15/2/06, 25 participants) and Indonesia (Makassar, 24-25/7/06, 25 participants) were highly successful and showed strong commitment from project partner organizations and staff in Vietnam (PPD, NIPP, WVV) and Indonesia (IAARD, AIAT, IIRR). Long term objectives and associated activities were reiterated, detailed annual project plans were developed and case study areas were identified.

Project sites in Vietnam (An Giang and Ha Nam) and Indonesia (South Sulawesi and West Java) have been identified on the basis of discussions with experts, Key Informant Interviews (KIIs), Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) and other programs in the area, and have been established in the third quarter of 2006 in Vietnam (7 treatment and 7 references hamlets in An Giang; 13 treatment and 6 reference hamlets in Ha Nam) and will be established in the first quarter of 2007 in Indonesia. At this first stage of the project treatment sites receive Trap Barrier System (TBS) and/or Community Action (CA) demonstration, extension and information. Note that CA includes ecological rodent management practices like synchronized cropping, timed community campaigns and field hygiene.

In alignment with the establishment of project sites, detailed baseline information for these sites is collected using Knowledge, Attitude and Practice & Socio-Economic (KAP&SE) household surveys, KIIs and FGDs, which were conducted and entered in the second half of 2006 in Vietnam and will be conducted and entered in the first half of 2007 in Indonesia.

Training for project staff included a 2-day KAP&SE survey development and training workshop in Vietnam and Indonesia, and a 4-day ACCESS data entry training workshop in Vietnam. In addition, the 3rd International Conference on Rodent Biology and Management (ICRBM) in Vietnam (Hanoi, 28/8/06 till 1/9/06) provided an excellent opportunity for in-country project leaders to exchange ideas and experiences as well as to present these to the wider scientific community.

Training courses for farmers in Vietnam included eight 1-day workshops on ecological rodent management technologies, to familiarize farmers with the available technologies, their functioning and associated costs. Farmers showed a strong interest in these workshops as evidenced by the number of participants (in total over 600 farmers participated).

Formal linkages to local extension organizations and programs have been strengthened, including linkages with PPD, sub-PPDs and World Vision in Vietnam and linkages with AIAT, sub-AIATs and IIRR in Indonesia. An important additional linkage in Indonesia has been the alignment of the project with the Primatani program, which is a new national program for accelerating dissemination of agricultural production technologies.

The project is progressing according to plan and is on track to meet all milestones.

The main emphasis of the project over the last 12 months has been training of farmers and regional extension staff to consolidate activities on project sites, and also to encourage adoption of sustainable integrated ecological rodent management in neighbouring villages and districts. There were approximately 40 training activities conducted in Vietnam and Indonesia and an estimated 4000 farmers trained. The capacity of core project staff (10 staff) and technical extension staff (approximately 140) has been increased through on-the-job training and formal training courses and workshops.

Project activities in Vietnam (Ha Nam province in the Red River Delta and An Giang province in the Mekong Delta) and Indonesia (Karawang district West Java and Pinrang district in South Sulawesi) have concentrated on establishing community actions (CA includes synchronised cropping, field sanitation, community campaigns at key times), and setting up community trap barrier systems (CTBS), training of farmers, cross visits, and demonstration sites. Farmer activities are monitored through farmer diaries (collected every 2 weeks), damage is assessed at 3 key stages of crop growth, and rice yields are collected at the end of each season. Results so far indicate that yields on treatment sites are 1-2% higher than on reference sites and the cost of rodent management actions conducted are less expensive on treatment sites than on reference sites at a village scale.

The key impacts resulting from project activities over the last 12 months include:
Community impacts: increase participation of farmers and desire to involve community members to manage rats at a community/village level. Carry-over benefit of mutual management for rodents and brown plant hoppers in the Mekong Delta because of synchronised cropping.
Economic impacts: less damage observed on treatment sites and slightly higher rice crop yields, leading to benefits for households.
Social impacts: increased involvement within the farming community to bring a common benefit to the whole community through the rodent management, and involvement in communal rodent management with neighbouring villages.
Environmental impacts: reduction in the use of rodenticides and plastic sheeting used for constructing barriers around individual rice fields.

Another key focus of the project is to implement and promote sustainable integrated rodent management at a large scale, achieved through communication and training activities:
Training activities: Core project staff have undertaken important on-the-job training and structured and formal training courses/workshops, and postgraduate training for 2 ACIAR John Allwright Fellowships for Masters and PhD students to study in Australia.
Communication and dissemination activities: Review workshops involving farmers, extension staff and project staff were conducted to evaluate results from each season and plan activities for the forthcoming season. There have been many training courses with farmers at different times of crop growth to encourage appropriate use and timing of rodent management to achieve desired outcomes. Thousands of rodent management booklets, leaflets and brochures have been distributed to farmers and extension staff in Vietnam and Indonesia.
Project planning: Involving all project partners to generate strong commitment and engagement from key staff and key institutions participating in the project. Planning workshops incorporated discussions and actions for communication planning and scaling out strategies.

The adoption of sustainable integrated ecological rodent management strategies has been promoted through a variety of communication and extension activities to farmers in the target provinces in both Vietnam and Indonesia, but also into neighbouring areas. An important strategy has been to utilise existing extension networks, such as the Primatani system in Indonesia and the "3-reductions and 3-gains" system in the Mekong Delta in Vietnam.

Other key activities include:
Training with knowledge attitudes and practices and socio-economic farmer survey (KAP&SE) and data entry and preliminary analysis.
Project site visits to monitor activities conducted by farmers, conduct focus group discussions and key informant interviews, attend project planning workshops and assist with training activities.
Preliminary analysis of KAP&SE data.
Key informant interviews in West Java and South Sulawesi with extension agencies, community leaders, credit managers and farmer group leaders to understand the governance arrangements for agricultural extension that condition adoption of the ecological rat control technologies, to understand the structural, financial and cultural barriers to effective extension, and to evaluate the effectiveness of the technologies and extension strategies to date.
Development of a rodent population dynamics model to link with a farm household model to explore farmer management decisions, which will be linked with a rice crop model to examine resulting changes in damage and yield loss to rice crops.
Development of household economic models to account for farmer decisions and examine cost-effectiveness of individual and community-based rodent management decisions and specific management scenarios.