Most of the authors are entomologists and they take an ecological
approach to agricultural production.
I recommend that anyone interested in agriculture read this paper.
There are few wasted words and it is well worth the time invested
to read it. For those of us who are not entomologists I have
written a short glossary that can be found with the paper on Joe
Lewis' web page.
The paper can be found on the web at
http://sacs.cpes.peachnet.edu/lewis/pnas.htm
We have a link to the paper on the Southern SARE web page
http://www.griffin.peachnet.edu/sare/ then scroll down and click on
Other Sust. Ag. Publications
Joe has gotten tremendous positive feedback on his ideas from growers,
folks who work with growers and from land grant university
researchers. Take a look at this paper.
The abstract is below.
A fundamental shift to a total system approach for crop protection is
urgently needed to resolve escalating economic and environmental
consequences of combating agricultural pests. Pest management
strategies have long been dominated by quests for "silver bullet"
products to control pest outbreaks. However, managing undesired
variables in ecosystems is similar to that for other systems,
including the human body and social orders. Experience in these fields
substantiates the fact that therapeutic interventions into any system
are effective only for short term relief because these externalities
are soon "neutralized" by countermoves within the system. Long term
resolutions can be achieved only by restructuring and managing these
systems in ways that maximize the array of "built-in" preventive
strengths, with therapeutic tactics serving strictly as backups to
these natural regulators. To date, we have failed to incorporate this
basic principle into the mainstream of pest management science and
continue to regress into a foot race with nature. In this report, we
establish why a total system approach is essential as the guiding
premise of pest management and provide arguments as to how earlier
attempts for change and current mainstream initiatives generally fail
to follow this principle. We then draw on emerging knowledge about
multitrophic level interactions and other specific findings about
management of ecosystems to propose a pivotal redirection of pest
management strategies that would honor this principle and, thus, be
sustainable. Finally, we discuss the potential immense benefits of
such a central shift in pest management philosophy.
John C. Mayne, Ph.D.
Southern SARE Program
1109 Experiment Street
Griffin, GA 30223
PH: (770) 229-3350
FX: (770) 412-4789
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