Integrated Pest Management: Innovation-Development Process

World-wide, integrated pest management (IPM) has become the accepted strategy for plant protection over the last five decades. Cotton growers in the Ca˜nete valley, Peru were amongst the first to adopt a combination of pest management practices to save the cotton crop from the ravages caused by pests despite applying 16 insecticide sprays on average. However, it was not until 1959, that the concept of “integrated management” was born in the United States of America (USA). A panel of experts from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) put the concept of IPM in operation in 1968. Advancements made in IPM systems for developing sustainable pest management strategies in the USA, Europe, Australia, Asia, Latin America and Africa have not generally resulted in wider adoption of IPM, though there have been some successes. Pesticides remain the main-stay of many IPM programs throughout the globe. In the USA and Europe, there is government legislation and mechanisms for implementation and evaluation of IPM programs, especially in Europe, where IPM innovation systems involving the government, researchers, farmers, advisory agencies and market forces are part of a system to reduce pesticide use. In the developing countries farmer education in IPM has gained impetus since 1989, through the Farmer Field School (FFS) extension methodology, originally developed for educating farmers in rice IPM. The FFS model of extension has spread from Asia to Latin America, Africa and Eastern Europe. In the developed countries the systematic periodic evaluation of IPM programs provides feedback for improving and formulating future strategies, but in many developing countries there is no periodic evaluation of IPM programs for assessing the extent of adoption and long term impact. This chapter provides a broad overview of IPM programs, policies and adoption of IPM practices in the North America, Europe, Australia, Asia, Latin America and Africa.

1.1 Introduction

 In the 1940s, with the introduction of synthetic pesticides, the whole scenario of pest management changed. The over reliance on synthetic pesticides from late 1940s to mid 1960s has been called “the dark ages” of pest control. The insecticidal properties of DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichlorethane) discovered by the Swiss chemist Paul Muller, an employee of J.R. Geigy Co., in 1939 triggered this “dark age” of pest control. The discovery of the herbicide 2 4-D stimulated chemical weed control, and discovery of the dithiocarbamate fungicides during the 1930s led to the development of increased reliance on fungicides (Smith and Kennedy, 2002). The American Entomologists proclaimed in 1944, “...never in the history of entomology has a chemical (DDT) been discovered that offers such promise ...” (Perkins, 1982). But the un-sustainability of pesticides was evident by the end of 1950s as complete reliance on pesticide intensive pest management was leading agriculture on a “pesticide treadmill”. Resistance of pests to pesticides was observed during 1940s, the phenomenon of pest resurgence and development of minor pests to major pests due to killing beneficial insects was documented in late twentieth century (Norris et al., 2003). Soon after World War II few scientists realized that indiscriminate use of synthetic organic insecticides would be problematic. Entomologists at the University of California, United States of America (USA) developed the concept of integrated pest management (IPM) during the 1950s in response to two major factors: the development of resistance to insecticides and the destruction of insect natural enemies by insecticides aimed at target pest insects. At the time of the first work on IPM, environmental pollution from insecticides was not a major factor in spurring entomologists to develop new practices, even though medical and environmental scientists recognized the widespread, unintended poisoning of people and other species (Perkins, 1982). So the Californian entomologists coined the concept of “supervised control”, involving supervision of insect control by qualified entomologists (Smith and Smith, 1949). A decade later this concept had evolved and the concept of “integrated control” which combined and integrated biological and chemical control based on economic threshold concepts was put forward (Stern et al., 1959). Rachel Carson (1962) wrote the book Silent Spring that brought the problems caused by pesticides to the attention of the public and the scientists. Silent Spring also got the attention of the scientific community on negative externalities of pesticide use. She wrote in her book, “We have put poisonous and biologically potent chemicals indiscriminately in the hands of personslargely or wholly ignorant of their potential for harm.” The term “Integrated Pest Management” was used for the first time by Smith and van dan Bosch (1967) and in 1969 this term was formally recognized by the US National Academy of Sciences. In the 40 years since then there have been dramatic changes in the technologies available for pest management. In the 1970s, DDT was widely banned due to environmental risks. In 1972, insecticides based on the bacteria, Bacillus thuringiensis, were released for control of Lepidopteran pests. Transgenic pest resistant crops were released in 1996, representing the biggest step in technology since the development of pesticides in the 1940s. In the 1960s, the  term “pest management” also came into existence and being broader it included other suppressive tactics such as semio-chemicals, host plant resistance and cultural control. But with the passage of time integrated pest control and pest management became synonymous and both were based on the concept of integrating a range of control tactics to manage pests, with insecticides as one of the tools rather than the only tool. The basic tactics of IPM were proposed and applied to reduce crop losses against the ravages of pests long before the expression was coined (Jones, 1973; Smith et al., 1973). Throughout the early twentieth century, plant protection specialists relied on knowledge of pest biology and cultural practices to produce multitactical control strategies (Gaines, 1957). It was not until the incorporation of all classes of pests in the early 1970s that the modern concept of IPM was born (Kogan, 1998; Prokopy and Kogan, 2003). Pest control was understood as the set of actions taken to avoid, attenuate, or delay the impact of pests on crops, as such goals and procedures of pest control were clearly understood (Kogan, 1998). However, not until 1972, were “integrated pest management” and its acronym IPM incorporated into English literature and accepted by the scientific community (Kogan, 1998) and later, in November 1972, the report Integrated Pest Management prepared by the Council on Environmental Quality was published (Anonymous, 1972). IPM is the main strategy recommended for pest management under Agenda 21 of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED, 1992). Pesticide use (active ingredients) in agriculture has decreased from 2.6 billion kg in 2004 (Allan Woodburn Associates, 2005) to 1.7 billion kg in 2007 (Agranova, 2008). Total sales in 2007 were estimated at US $35.85 billion (insecticides 26.4%, fungicides 23.2%, herbicides 45.6% and others 4.7%) (Agranova, 2008). The average growth rate of pesticide consumption world-wide during the period of 1993 to 1998 was in the order of 5 percent per year, exceeding that during the earlier period, 1983 to 1993. Global pesticide market recorded a negative average annual growth rate of 1.3 percent (after inflation) between 1998 and 2007 (Agranova, 2008). However, in 2007 there was a surge in the global sales of pesticides by 8.1 percent (after inflation) which is the largest single year growth for 10 years. The major markets for pesticides are the USA, Western Europe and Japan (Dinham, 2005). In Latin America sales of pesticides rose by 25% in 2004 (Allan Woodburn Associates, 2005) and since then recorded a growth rate of 20% between 2004 and 2007 (Agranova, 2008). Despite these statistics there has been significant progress with the uptake of IPM in many countries. The theory and principles supporting IPM have evolved over the last 50 years. In addition new tools and strategies have been developed to support development of IPM systems: newer more selective insecticides, progress in the development of biopesticides, the development of semio-chemical based approaches (attract and kill, mating disruption), improved understanding of the deployment of trap and refuge crops, the use of “push-pull” strategies, techniques to conserve and attract beneficials in systems, use of augmentive biological control and most recently the advent of transgenic crops producing the Cry proteins from Baccillus.