The study was set up as a randomised block design,
with onevillagewith the highest and onewith the lowest
rodent damage being allocated at random to both
treatments. In treated villages, farmers adopted the
following integrated management: synchrony of planting
within 2 weeks; use of eight trap-barrier systems
(TBS), each 20 m 20 m with a crop planted inside 3
weeks early (see Singleton et al., 1999b); a 2-week rat
campaign 1 week prior to transplanting or within 2
weeks of crop initiation around source habitats (village
gardens and irrigation channels (Jacob et al., 2003));
reduction of secondary irrigation banks to less than
30 cm to prevent nesting by rats; and general hygiene
76 G.R. Singleton et al. / Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment 107 (2005) 75–82
around villages and gardens. Farmers in the treated
villages who wished to use rodenticides were encouraged
to apply them before maximum tillering. During
the 2001 dry season in the treated villages, a 17-day
bounty system was instigated to encourage farmers to
work together to control rats in their gardens and along
irrigation channels within 2 weeks of transplanting. The
farmers were paid US$ 0.015 per rat tail (150 Rupiah).
In the untreated villages, farmers conducted their usual
control methods for managing rats, i.e. poisoning,
fumigation and hunting, with most activities conducted
by individuals and rarely coordinated with their
neighbors. No bounty system was utilized in the
control villages during this study.