Report Finds IPM Key to Future Pest Management

"Report finds IPM key to future pest management"
by Heather C. Jones
in Feedstuffs

WASHINGTON D.C. -- Consumers Union, publisher of Consumers Reports, will soon release a two-year study claiming that the overall risk presented by pesticides in use today is no less than it was 25 years ago, but that greater use of Integrated Pest Management (IPM) strategies can turn this trend around.

"We're on a pesticide treadmill", according to Dr.. Charles M. Benbrook, lead researcher for the 288-page report, Pest Management at the Crossroads.

"While pesticide use has risen since the early 1970s, crop losses to pests have not declined. Not only don't chemical methods of pest control work as well as they should, they pose substantial ecological and economic risks. What's needed to get off this treadmill is a quicker shift to safer, ecologically sounder and more cost-effective IPM methods," said Benbrook.

Benbrook, an authority on pesticide policy and a former executive director of the National Academy of Sciences' Board on Agriculture, noted that the transition to biointensive IPM won't occur by "government decree or intensified regulation."

Instead, he said the transition will be "driven primarily by market forces," and "biointensive IPM will become the status quo only when it becomes more profitable for pest managers to control pests through IPM."

According to Consumers Union, biointensive IPM relies on reduced-risk pesticides only when other, non-chemical measures fall short. The organization said it believes this should be the ultimate goal of pest management in all settings.

Consumers Union called for bringing 75% of all crop acreage under increased IPM by 2010 and 100% under biointensive IPM by 2020.