Integrated pest management and rural development

Abstract

The answer to the challenge of intervening in the 9th IPM National Meeting, subordinated to a reading of the Integrated Pest Management (IPM) "world" (technical-scientific) framed by a rural development perspective, is rooted in two issues of the Portuguese society: the urgent need to increase the production of tradable goods (competitiveness), and, given the progressive dissociation of the population and the agricultural field and forest, the remaking of the relations between society and space (territorial planning). In this context, concepts are revisited and reflected upon: (i) can a rural development perspective assist in overcoming those problems? (ii) what may come from the IPM "world" for such perspective?

The contribution to the competitiveness of the IPM "world" is captured through technological innovation (the economic impact, along time, of plant protection products consumption). Also, the IPM world, when anchoring the rural development in the territory, contributes to induce strategies of collective efficiency, through organizational innovation.