Natural Pest Control

This article is in line with our experience on the farm over the past fourty years, and underlines the work of the founder of Organic farming, Sir Albert Howard, and other leading researchers in the organic farming community.

Sir Albert Howard pointed out that the insects are natures monitors, that they only attack the unhealthy plant. They are warning us that the conditions in which the plant is growing are not supplying the necessary ingredients, or oversupplying some and undersupplying others, or in some instances stopping the uptake of essential nutrients. All of these situations can be caused by a number of factors, including, poor soil conditions(management),chemical farming,weather conditions(too hot or cold, too dry or wet etc.)to name a few.

Over the years we have demonstrated the validity of these claims on many occasions. One of our favourite ways of doing so has been to withhold water from our vegetable plants, In a relatively short time they are being devoured by insects. Restore the water(remove the stress), and almost immediately the insects disappear, and the plants return to their former healthy state.



Better Pest Control with Organic Agriculture


02/07/2010

Washington State University has found that organic farms are better at fighting pests. The researchers discovered that there was a much better balance of animal and plant communities on organic farms compared to standard high intensive farms and this resulted in bigger and healthier crops.



For the experiment, the researchers chose to test a potato crop and by regular analysis they found there to be a more balanced insect population in which no one species was able to dominate. Plants in these balanced environments grew better.



Post-doctorate research associate in entomology at Washington State University, David Crowder, said "I think 'balance' is a good term,"

because "When the species are balanced, at least in our experiments, they're able to fulfill their roles in a more harmonious fashion."



The conclusions being made are that to restore an ecosystem, both richness and evenness are needed.



French fry customers such as McDonald's and Wendy's as well as the potato industry in general are taking keen note of the results from this and other similar studies as they are needing to know which pest control practices are ecological sustainable.



In most current pest control management systems, the biological communities that result on farms are ones that are dominated by just a few species. This often results in one species accounting for 75% of the insect population. In stark contrast, on organic farms the most abundant specie of the farms’ predators and enemies amounted to only 38% of the insect population.



Crowder suggested that the reason why conventional farms get a much lower specie balance may be due to different methods used for crop fertilization and/or from unwittingly killing certain crop enemies over others.