Integrated pest management (IPM) practices, as part of crop management activities, have produced substantial economic and environmental benefits in various agricultural production systems. Implementing IPM requires a coordinated strategy of enhancing farmers’ management skills, promoting awareness in food chain operators and consumers, developing an appropriate regulatory and policy environment, and providing economic incentives for incorporating the external benefits of improved practices into farm-level decision making. Training and capacity building at the level of the individual producer and service provider are essential. The use of chemical pesticides in agriculture has produced impressive yield gains but has provoked concern over risks to human health, the environment, and food quality. In some cases, particularly where chemical inputs are subsidized, pesticides have been over-used, and the long-term sustainability of agricultural systems has been undermined. IPM as part of ICM (integrated crop management) is seen as a sound agricultural practice towards sustainable agricultural production to increase farmer income, foster growth, and improve food security by reducing pest losses while protecting the health of producers, consumers, and the environment Investment in IPM IPM is essentially a decision-making process that identifies pest problems and associated crop losses and devises science-based strategies to prevent economic losses. IPM offers a menu of options or management practices to keep pest incidence below economically damaging levels while maintaining a quality environment. These alternatives range from reducing pest status and reducing a crop’s susceptibility to pest injury to combining reductions in pest numbers and crop susceptibility. Pest numbers can be reduced through targeted, judicious use of synthetic pesticides or by biological control and other nonchemical means (box 4.26). Reducing crop susceptibility, regarded as one of the most effective, economically sound and environmentally desirable tactics, involves developing host plant resistance and managing the crop environment. In addition to this mix of technical options, IPM focuses increasingly on enhancing farmers’ skills to use agroecological knowledge to manage production systems. The application of IPM tools and tactics is therefore highly situation and site-specific. Investment in public IPM research and farmer education and participatory approaches has yielded returns comparable to research on other agricultural technologies. Recently, the Bank’s competitive research grants programs have channeled substantial funding into IPM-related research. Pest-resistant seed varieties developed through genetic modification techniques add new technological options to the IPM toolbox. A number of reasons have been given as constraints to large-scale IPM adoption. The principal reasons are the gap between IPM theory (concept) and practice, weak research and extension systems, poor information and knowledge management, the influence of pesticides and the plant science industry, the lack of incentives for participatory multidisciplinary research, and unfavorable national policies, especially pesticide subsidies.     
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