ABSTRACT
Traditional and/or peasant agriculture is a prominent rural activity in most parts of the developing world. For example, in Latin America there are about nine million peasant production units located mostly in marginal environments and exhibiting low productivity (Ortega 1986). Nevertheless, their contribution to regional food security is crucial since they produce most of the maize, beans, potatoes and other staple foods. This small farm sector has been bypassed by agricultural modernization, mainly because new technologies were not made available to small farmers on favorable terms and hence often they were not suited to the agroecological and socioeconomic conditions (de Janvry 1981). Pest management innovations are no exception (Altieri 1984 and 1985).
