Identifying and Analyzing the Farmer's Practices related to Rice Integrated Pest Management in Marvdasht County, Fars Province

Integrated Pest Management (IPM) is a dynamic, integrated approach involving a number of control techniques to manage pest populations in an ecologically sound fashion. IPM, as one of sustainable agricultural development components, is based on synergy of empowering farmers, environmental friendly technology and integrated farm management. Effective IPM extension needs identification and analysis of related principal components with aim to policy making and planning by farmers’ participation. Along with this comment, this research was done based on survey strategy with aim to studying farmer’s practices related to rice integrated pest management. Validity of questionnaire as data gathering instrument, confirmed by selected experts and Coronbach Alpha coefficient (equal to 79%-87% range for parts of questionnaire) used to confirm its reliability. The population of this research included all rice growers in Droudzan District of Marvdasht county and a representative sample selected (n=90) by Cochran formula. According to findings of factor analyzing of farmer’s practices related to rice IPM, three components were extracted. The first factor called the farming improvement practices factor explained 26% of the total variance. The second factor called the biological practices factor explained 15% of the variances. The third factor called physical-mechanical practices factor explained 9% of the variances. These factors, totally explained 50% variances of farmer’s practices related to rice IPM.