Assessment on the socio-economic impact of methods for the control of the golden snail in Isabela, Philippines

At the height of the golden snail infestation in the Philippine ricelands, the Department of Agriculture (DA) developed different control methods against the pest and launched the strategic extension campaign (SEC) in 1989 to promote them among concerned rice farmers. Isabela was one of the centers for SEC. The present study was carried out among 90 rice farmers in three municipalities in Isabela to: a) determine the level of farmers' knowledge and adoption to the recommended control methods, b) describe the farmers' patterns of adoption to these methods, c) measure the magnitude of incremental costs and returns derived from using the different control patterns used, and d) determine the pattern (s) that would give the highest additional returns. There was a high level of knowledge among the sample farmers on the recommended control methods. But in the process of adoption, they select the ones that would best fit with their available household resources and farm conditions. There were six distinct control patterns which the respondents followed: four are chemical dependents (Patterns 1 to 4), and two are non-chemical dependents (Patterns 5 and 6). Control methods such as increased seeding rate and proper water management were widely used by all the sample farmers while no one adopted the use of stakes and herbal preparations. Chemical spraying was still considered by the majority as the fastest and most effective method of control. The costs of the different control patterns range from P1, 671.00 (Pattern 1) to P2, 341.00 (Pattern 6). From the analysis, Pattern 1 (having the least cost) gave the highest positive increase in net returns of about 156.7 percent. On the other hand, the dominance analysis in partial budgeting revealed that Pattern 1 still offers the highest value of marginal returns between the chemical dependent control patterns, while Pattern 5 gave a higher margin over Pattern 6 between the non-chemical dependent control patterns.