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Benefits and costs of an integrated management system coordinated at the community level to reduce rodent damage to lowland irrigated rice were measured in West Java, Indonesia, from 1999 to 2002. Four villages, each of 120ha (70–80 families per village), were involved in the study, two being allocated as treatments and two as controls following a randomised block design. The emphasis was on integrated rodent management with the overall aim of reducing the need for toxic chemicals in rice fields. Rodent damage to rice can be measured at several stages of crop growth. In West Java, monocultures of lowland irrigated rice, cumulative damage to rice during the dry season was 54% at the primordial stage, 32% at the booting stage, but only 16% at the ripening stage. If measured at the ripening stage, the measured value ought to be multiplied by approximately 6.5 to obtain cumulative damage to the rice crop …