Can Farmers grow more using Biopesticides while protecting their Land's Fertility?

Copyright (c) 2010 Alison Withers

Consumer pressure through retailers for healthier, chemical free food has plainly given a push to researchers and scientists to devise new and more sustainable farming methods.

Financial pressures have also increased on farmers all over the world, whether they are small producers or large agribusinesses, leading to a search for ways to increase their land's productivity.

Up to an estimated one third of global agricultural production is destroyed by more than 20,000 species of field and storage pests.

Worries about food scarcity add to the mix as the planet's population continues to grow.

All this takes place in the context of growing concern about the environment, about the effects via our food of excessive chemical fertiliser use on our own health and on the quality of the land we all depend on.

It's arguably irrelevant whether the motivation is fear, finance or famine or whether it's based on concern for the planet, ethics and for inequalities between peoples.

It's unfortunate that it's human nature that we are prompted to innovation only when situations reach near-crisis point but it's also encouraging that once we've reached that point human ingenuity can, if it tries, come up with solutions.

The result is a greater openness to innovation in the research and development of agricultural products for pest and disease control, yield improvements and sustainable farming.

This has given rise to a new approach to tackling pests and diseases which includes biological control, integrated pest management and biotechnology.

The approach stresses a more ecologically aware, whole system approach based on the study of population biology at the local farm level. It involves using a combination of science, renewable technologies such as host-plant resistance and natural biological control, which can be made available to even the most resource-poor farmers.

Take birds, for example. To a flock of hungry birds a ripening cornfield is an "all you can eat" free buffet. To the farmer they're freeloaders, literally eating into his profits from the field.

However, another dimension of the whole issue of concern for the environment means we are all more sensitive to animal welfare issues so that much of the UK's wildlife, for example, is now legally protected - leaving the farmer to find some "humane" means of protecting his livelihood from pillage!

Scarecrows don't work all that well these days, birds gradually become immune to bird scarers and plainly guns and poisons won't be acceptable to most people as a humane crop protection measure!

Here's where innovation comes in - someone's invented an acoustic hand-held device that works by broadcasting a digitally stored distress call to create a hostile environment in the problem area, which causes the birds to sense danger and fly away. It's reported to be almost 100% effective.

As a response to the growing demand for integrated pest management and a holistic approach to controlling pests and increasing crop production, therefore, the new generations of biopesticides currently under development can also be seen as an innovative new way for providing the agircultural products farmers and growers need to combine pest and disease control, increased yield and preserving their land's quality.

Biopesticides are generally specific to the pest or disease they're designed to deal with and replace the toxic chemicals used in the past with more sophisticated biologically based agents. They are derived from natural materials like animals, plants, bacteria, and certain minerals.

There is also less risk of subsoil and water contamination as they remain in the crop and soil for a shorter time, and they generall do not lead to the development of increased resistance as the previous generation of chemical pest control agents did.

There are obstacles, of course. Because they're pest and location specific thayhave a smaller market and are expensive to produce. There is not yet a globally-agreed system of testing and registration for these new products and they can therefore take up to seven or eight years to come onto the market.

But can we be equally inovative in removing the obstacles to getting on with a job which is plainly urgent.

About The Author There's pressure from consumers and therefore retailers for healthier, chemical-free foods, pressure on farmers to grow more and pressure on the environment. Consumer journalist Ali Withers considers whether these pressures are yet at the critical mass needed for humans to finally tap into their creativity and innovation and come up with better solutions to pest and disease control in agriculture - such as biopesticides?