Acroecology and the right to food 2011, para. 19
Paragraph- Paragraph text
- Sometimes, seemingly minor innovations can provide high returns. In Kenya, researchers and farmers developed the "push-pull" strategy to control parasitic weeds and insects that damage the crops. The strategy consists in "pushing" away pests from corn by inter-planting corn with insect-repellent crops like Desmodium, while "pulling" them towards small plots of Napier grass, a plant that excretes a sticky gum which both attracts and traps pests. The system not only controls pests but has other benefits as well, because Desmodium can be used as fodder for livestock. The push-pull strategy doubles maize yields and milk production while, at the same time, improves the soil. The system has already spread to more than 10,000 households in East Africa by means of town meetings, national radio broadcasts and farmer field schools. In Japan, farmers found that ducks and fish were as effective as pesticide for controlling insects in rice paddies, while providing additional protein for their families. The ducks eat weeds, weed seeds, insects, and other pests, thus reducing weeding labour, otherwise done by hand by women, and duck droppings provide plant nutrients. The system has been adopted in China, India, and the Philippines. In Bangladesh, the International Rice Research Institute reports 20 per cent higher crops yields, and net incomes on a cash cost basis have increased by 80 per cent.
- Legal status
- Non-negotiated soft law
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on the right to food
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Means of adoption
- N.A.
- Topic(s)
- Environment
- Food & Nutrition
- Health
- Person(s) affected
- Women
- Year
- 2011
- Paragraph type
- Other
- Reference
- SR Food, Report to the HRC (2011), A/HRC/16/49, para. 19.
- Paragraph number
- 19
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