Integrated pest management
Integrated Pest Management (IPM) is a sustainable approach to controlling pest populations in agriculture that emphasizes coordinated strategies to keep pests below damaging levels while minimizing environmental impact. Unlike traditional pest management methods that focused on the complete eradication of pests through chemical pesticides, IPM integrates biological, cultural, and chemical tactics in a more balanced way. This approach reduces reliance on synthetic pesticides, which can pose risks to human health and the environment, particularly through contamination of water sources and the development of pesticide-resistant pests.
The development of IPM typically progresses through three phases. The first phase involves careful pesticide management, where farmers apply chemicals only when pest populations exceed economic thresholds. The second phase introduces cultural management practices, such as crop rotation and altering planting times, to disrupt pest life cycles. The third and most complex phase is biological control, which employs natural predators to manage pest populations. This comprehensive methodology not only enhances agricultural sustainability but also fosters a deeper understanding of ecosystem dynamics, making IPM an increasingly embraced strategy in modern farming.
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Subject Terms
Integrated pest management
DEFINITION: The use of coordinated tactics aimed at maintaining populations of insect, animal, or plant pests below damaging levels in an economical and environmentally compatible manner
The practice of integrated pest management helps to protect the environment by reducing the need for the development and use of chemical pesticides, which can pose dangers to human health if they enter surface water or groundwater.
In the past, management strategies in agriculture focused primarily on eliminating all of a particular pest from a given field or area. These strategies depended on the use of chemical pesticides to kill all of the pest organisms. Prior to the twentieth century, farmers used naturally occurring compounds such as kerosene or pyrethrum for this purpose. During the latter half of the twentieth century, synthetic pesticides began to play a prominent role in controlling crop pests. After 1939, the use of pesticides such as was so successful in terms of controlling pest populations that farmers began to substitute a heavy dependence on pesticides for sound pest management strategies. The more pesticides the farmers used, the more dependent they became. Soon, pests in high-value crops became resistant to one after another. In addition, outbreaks of secondary pests occurred because either they developed to the pesticides or the pesticides killed their natural enemies. This supplied the impetus for chemical companies to develop new pesticides, to which the pests also eventually developed resistance.
Eventually, certain pests developed resistance to all US-government-approved materials designed to control them. In addition, many pesticides are toxic to humans, wildlife, and other nontarget organisms and therefore contribute to environmental pollution. Also, it became very expensive for chemical companies to put new pesticides on the market. For these reasons, many producers in the late twentieth century began looking at alternative strategies for managing pests; is one such strategy. The driving force behind the development of IPM programs has been concern regarding various negative effects of the use of pesticides: the contamination of and other nontarget sites, adverse effects on nontarget organisms, and development of pesticide resistance. Pesticides will probably continue to play a vital role in pest management, even in IPM, but it is believed that their role will be greatly diminished over time.
An agricultural consists of the crop and its surrounding habitat. The interactions among soil, water, weather, plants, and animals in this ecosystem are rarely constant enough to provide the ecological stability seen in nonagricultural ecosystems. Nevertheless, it is possible to utilize IPM to manage most pests in an economically efficient and environmentally friendly manner. IPM programs have been successfully implemented in the cropping of cotton and potatoes, and are being developed for other crops.
Three Stages of IPM Development
There are generally three stages of development associated with IPM programs, and the speed at which a program progresses through these stages is dependent on the existing knowledge of the agricultural ecosystem and the level of sophistication desired. The first phase is the pesticide management phase. The implementation of this phase requires that the farmer know the relationship between pest densities and the resulting damage to crops so that the pesticide is not applied unnecessarily. In other words, farmers do not have to kill all the pests all the time. They must use pesticides only when the economic damage caused by a number of pest organisms present on a given crop exceeds the cost of using a pesticide. This practice alone can reduce the number of chemical applications by as much as one-half.
The implementation of the next stage, the cultural management phase, requires knowledge of the pest’s biology and its relationship to the cropping system. Cultural management includes such practices as delaying planting times, utilizing crop rotation, altering harvest dates, and planting resistance cultivars. It is necessary that farmers understand pest responses to other species as well as abiotic factors, such as temperature and humidity, in the environment. If farmers know the factors that control the growth of particular pests, they may be able to reduce the impacts of those pests on their crops. For example, if particular pests require short days to complete their development, farmers might be able to harvest their crops before the pests have a chance to develop.
The third stage of IPM, the biological control phase, involves the use of biological organisms rather than chemicals to control pests. This is the most difficult phase to implement because farmers must understand not only the pests’ biologies but also the biologies of the pests’ natural enemies and the degree of effectiveness with which these agents control the pests. In general, it is not possible for farmers to rely completely on biological control methods. A major requirement in using a biological agent is that sufficient numbers of the control agent must be present at the same time the pest population is at its peak. It is sometimes possible to change planting dates so that the populations of the pests and the biological control agents are synchronized. Also, multiple pest species are often present at the same time within a given crop, and it is extremely difficult to control more than one pest at a time with biological agents.
Bibliography
Altieri, Miguel Angel, and Clara Ines Nicholls. Biodiversity and Pest Management in Agroecosystems. Binghamton, N.Y.: Haworth Press, 2004.
Han, Peng, et al. "A Theoretical Framework to Improve the Adoption of Green Integrated Pest Management Tactics." Communications Biology, vol. 7, no. 227, 18 Mar. 2024, doi.org/10.1038/s42003-024-06027-6. Accessed 17 July 2024.
"Integrated Pest Management (IPM) Principles." US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), 20 Sept. 2023, www.epa.gov/safepestcontrol/integrated-pest-management-ipm-principles. Accessed 17 July 2024.
Pedigo, Larry P., and Marlin E. Rice. Entomology and Pest Management. 6th ed. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2009.
Radcliffe, Edward B., William D. Hutchison, and Rafael E. Cancelado, eds. Integrated Pest Management: Concepts, Tactics, Strategies, and Case Studies. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Rechcigl, Jack E., and Nancy A. Rechcigl. Insect Pest Management: Techniques for Environmental Protection. Boca Raton, Fla.: CRC Press, 2000.