Is Integrated Pest Management the Answer?
An increasing number of pest control experts and farmers believe the best way to control crop pests is a carefully designed integrated pest management (IPM) program. In this approach, each crop and its pests are evaluated as parts of an ecological system. Then a control program is developed that includes cultivation, biological, and chemical methods applied in proper sequence and with the proper timing. The overall aim of IPM is not to eradicate pest populations but to reduce crop damage to an economically tolerable level. Fields are monitored carefully, and when an economically damaging level of pests is reached, farmers first use biological methods (natural predators, parasites, and disease organisms) and cultivation controls, including vacuuming up harmful bugs. Small amounts of insecticides (mostly botanicals or microbotanicals, mostly based on natural pesticides produced by plants) are applied only as a last resort, and different chemicals are used to slow development of genetic r
