Ecological approaches and the development of "truly integrated" pest management

Recent predictions of growth in human populations and food supply suggest t hat there will be a need to substantially increase food production in the n ear future. One possible approach to meeting this demand, at least in part, is the control of pests and diseases, which currently cause a 30-40% loss in available crop production. In recent years, strategies for controlling p ests and diseases have tended to focus on short-term, single-technology int erventions, particularly chemical pesticides. This model frequently applies even where so-called integrated pest management strategies are used becaus e in reality, these often are dominated by single technologies (e.g., bioco ntrol, host plant resistance, or bio-pesticides) that are used as replaceme nts for chemicals. Very little attention is given to the interaction or com patibility of the different technologies used. Unfortunately, evidence sugg ests that such approaches rarely yield satisfactory results and are unlikel y to provide sustainable pest control solutions for the future. Drawing on two case histories, this paper demonstrates that by increasing our basic un derstanding of how individual pest control technologies act and interact, n ew opportunities for improving pest control can be revealed. This approach stresses the need to break away from the existing single-technology, pestic ide-dominated paradigm and to adopt a more ecological approach built around a fundamental understanding of population biology at the local farm level and the true integration of renewable technologies such as host plant resis tance and natural biological control, which are available to even the most resource-poor farmers.