Participatory Pest Surveillance Across Fragmented Small Farms

Daniel Frei

Participatory Pest Surveillance Across Fragmented Small Farms

Author(s)	Dr. Daniel Frei
Country	United States
Abstract	Pest surveillance becomes particularly difficult in agricultural landscapes composed of numerous small and spatially fragmented farms. Individual farmers may observe early symptoms or pest populations within their own fields, yet fragmented reporting, inconsistent scouting practices, diagnostic uncertainty, and weak communication among neighboring farms can delay recognition of wider outbreaks. This study develops a simulation-based framework for evaluating participatory pest surveillance as a community-scale early-warning strategy for fragmented small-farm landscapes. Five surveillance arrangements are compared: isolated farm scouting, informal neighbor reporting, cluster-based scout networks, standardized participatory surveillance, and participatory surveillance integrated with diagnostic verification. A Participatory Pest Surveillance Capacity Index is constructed using spatial coverage, reporting timeliness, diagnostic reliability, collective response coordination, and farmer inclusion. Simulated capacity increases from 43.4 under isolated scouting to 56.5 for informal reporting, 73.1 for organized cluster scouting, 85.2 for standardized participatory surveillance, and 90.0 when community reporting is linked with professional diagnostic verification. A complementary response-lag simulation indicates that the median interval between initial field detection and coordinated response can decline from approximately 12 days under isolated scouting to 2.6 days in the most integrated model. The findings suggest that farmer participation can expand surveillance reach beyond what extension or regulatory personnel can inspect directly, but volunteered observations require standardized protocols, training, feedback, and quality-control mechanisms. Fragmented landscapes should therefore be monitored as connected epidemiological spaces rather than as collections of independent holdings. The study concludes that effective participatory pest surveillance combines local observation density with verified diagnosis, spatially coordinated reporting, transparent alert thresholds, and extension or plant-health institutional support. The proposed framework offers a practical basis for designing early-warning systems for smallholder landscapes without presenting hypothetical surveillance outcomes as empirical field evidence.
Keywords	participatory pest surveillance, small farms, integrated pest management, farmer monitoring, early warning, plant health, agricultural biosecurity, pest detection
Field	Engineering
Published In	Volume 7, Issue 1, January-February 2026
Published On	2026-02-25

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American Journal of Advanced Multidisciplinary Innovation and Research

A Widely Indexed Open Access Peer Reviewed Multidisciplinary Bi-monthly Scholarly International Journal

Participatory Pest Surveillance Across Fragmented Small Farms

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