Heavy
reliance on garlic and pepper sprays instead of chemical pesticides for
controlling insects in so many developed countries including the United States
are due to two generally accepted reasons and they are as follows: (a) the
growing concern over the potential of widespread damage to the environment from
the dispersion of poisons through food chains leading to valuable predators and
humans, and (b) the fact that, for ecological reasons, pesticides commonly fail
to control pests.
When
pesticide use leads to more pesticide use, the manufacturer increases his or
her sales and profits; the user suffers greater loss, while environmental
contamination increases. The reluctant recognition of these problems associated
with the pesticide treadmill is helping to force farmers towards the
reconsideration of alternative methods of pest control.
Unfortunately,
the fact that new tools are needed which has not always gone together well with
the understanding that an entirely new approach, with radically different
conceptual underpinnings is required. For example, one finds evidence even in
the ORGANIC gardening and farming literature, abundant searches for new or
sometimes old, products that will serve the same obsolete philosophy- push
button eradication, but with hopeful fewer consequences in terms of public health.
The
ORGANIC grower who anticipates or observes insect presence or insect damage is
urged to fight back with an arsenal of simplistic remedies (garlic and pepper
sprays), the release of spraying mantis or ladybird beetles, and the magic of
companion plants that will mysteriously repel undesirable wildlife if the right
combination is planted. This is not to say that such remedies never work, in
fact many of them have some of the desired effects of crop protection, though
not always for the reasons given. However, the framework within which these
solutions are offered and applied is basically fallacious.
The
agribusiness establishment grower, equally enamored of pest eradication as a
goal, is not helped to any new understanding of the problem by the rigid government-consumer
demands for foods unblemished by insect damage or insect parts.
The
farmer is caught in an economic squeeze between a pesticide-altered
agro-ecosystem on the one hand and cannery standards, agricultural codes, and
market place entomophobia on the other.
As
a society we are all frightened of insects to some extent, they are culturally
taboo as food and, with the exception of uneasy tolerance of honeybees, are
generally all lumped together as potential sources of human diseases and competitors
for our food and fiber. This general attitude makes rational observations and
decisions about our relationship to insects and similar-appearing wildlife
difficult for most people. The farmer is no exception.
