Which factors lead tomato growers to implement integrated pest management? Evidence from Turkey

In most competitive fresh fruit and vegetables chains, growers are faced with the need to comply with the requirements of increasingly safety demanding customers. Integrated Pest Management (IPM) practices have become a reliable solution for small-scale growers that cannot afford the cost of a Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) certificate. While the literature on farmer adoption of IPM practices focuses on farmer and farm characteristics, only a few authors underline the importance of technology and marketing. Moreover, only a few papers have studied IPM adoption in developing or emerging countries. Our paper aims to fill this gap by focusing on Turkey, an emerging country with dominant small-scale growers, where diffusion of IPM is still in its infancy. It also takes into account factors that go beyond the farmers and farm characteristics that are usually addressed by literature. 186 tomato growers have been surveyed in the province of Antalya, a region of Turkey supplying 85% of the national production of tomato grown under greenhouse. A counter of the eleven most salient IPM practices is used to model IPM adoption. The analysis confirms most of the predictions and highlights the key role of marketing and technology as determinants of IPM adoption.