Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
from being the victims of pesticide technologies, LGU entomologists
were for the most part active participants in their widespread deploy-
ment, and many of them gained professional stature as a result.
24
The
advent of synthetic pesticides led to the capture of entomology as a
discipline by scientists who understood their collective mission to be
developing chemical technologies to kill pests. Entomologists devoted to
their discipline's earlier partnership with ecology remained a small sub-
group, oriented toward biological control and its ecological paradigm.
25
For all their immediate lethal power, chemical pesticide technologies
introduced into ecological systems usually create both economic and
environmental backlash. While Rachel Carson was writing, a band of
entrepreneurial entomologists in California—trained by Smith's Division
of Biological Control—developed an ecologically informed approach to
manage pests they called Integrated Control, now known as Integrated
Pest Management (IPM).
26
Originally developed with insect pests, it has
subsequently been expanded to include all pests, including weeds, verte-
brates, and pathogens.
The pioneers of IPM used the term “integrated” because they recog-
nized that biological control as a stand alone strategy was often not
economically practical, but that when integrated with other ecological
tactics, it could be. IPM assumes an understanding of the ecological rela-
tionships between crop, pest, natural enemies, human decision making,
and the encompassing agroecosystem. It promotes the idea of injury
levels, or economic damage thresholds, insisting that not all crop dam-
age is economically significant. IPM allows the use pesticides, but only
in ecologically informed ways, guided by data about the spatial and
temporal impacts of pests and by an understanding of the ecological
consequences of the particular pesticide. Finally, IPM assumes that
trained, professional entomologists will work with growers to supervise
the dynamics within farming systems, and recommend management
strategies based on ecological knowledge.
27
The IPM pioneers developed these principles from their experience
in local collaborative pest-control initiatives, in which growers, profes-
sional entomologists (often their graduate students), and research
entomologists worked collaboratively to monitor, assess, and manage
fields. These cooperative initiatives shaped the social relations necessary
to support the implementation of IPM practices.
28
In 1975, two of the
