Commercial Farming is Hard Through the World… Very Hard!
Biological control can be defined as a method of controlling pests such as insects, mites, weeds and plant diseases using other organisms.
It is the control of a pest by the introduction of a natural enemy or predator. It relies on parasitism, herbivore, predation or other natural mechanism with an active human management.
To understand pests in the first in a magnanimous manner, less than 1% of more than 1 million identified species of insects are ‘pests’. A large number of insect species provide essential ecosystem services as plant pollinators, nutrient recyclers, and trash burners, natural enemies of pests and act as food for birds, fishes and amphibians and other components of food chain.
In India, Insecticides Act 1968 regulates the manufacture, import, sale and use of pesticides. Totally 40 pesticides have been banned. Ministry of Farmers’ Welfare and Agriculture, formed an expert committee, to review the use of 66 pesticides — which were banned and restricted in other countries. The ministry issued a draft to ban 27 pesticides in the country.
In Europe, when pesticides were banned by European Food Safety Authority — most were replaced by biological control of pests. Similarly in India, there is a need to replace banned pests with non-chemical tactics — pest resistant genotypes, cultural control practices and biological control and shift crop protection.
Ecosystem biodiversity in the firm of inter-corps, trap crops and plants in adjoining fields — will help keep mosts pests at sub-economic level. Today, safer alternatives are available in the market. New recommendations must be careful — impact on pollinators, natural enemies, secondary pests and microbiota must be carefully looked at.
In Punjab, the cultural method of stale seed bed is useful and needs to be popularised among famers — as integrated weed management (IWM)
Now is the chance for professional researchers to make a big leap towards bio-intensive IPM for environmentally safe crop protection. All this is a win-win situation for farms and consumers (environment aside)
