Progress, Problems, and Prospects for Integrated Pest Management

Abstract

The inequality of food demand and food supply has persisted in parts of the world since the dawn of man’s history, but in modern times the populations of developed countries have felt secure in their escape from hunger. This situation changed in 1974 with some food commodities in short supply on a worldwide basis. A high world population growth rate (currently about 2%) and major regional crop failures because of adverse climate and damaging pest attacks (principally insects and diseases) has brought the world feed and food grain reserves to their lowest levels in two decades (Revelle, 1974). Although the actual magnitude of the world food problem is not known, famine is reported in many developing countries, and the death rate is actually rising in at least 12 and possibly 20 such nations in Africa and Southern Asia (NAS, 1975). This imbalance in the world food-people equation has focused unprecedented attention to increased agricultural production in both developed and developing nations. Regardless of whether we succeed or fail in reducing significantly human population growth, the immediate challenge of the United States and the World is to optimize agricultural and other renewable resource productivity per unit of land area, water, fertilizer, energy, and time (Wittwer, 1975). These efforts to increase productivity of the land in both developed and developing countries will accelerate the development and adoption of production practices that generally intensify crop protection problems. The magnitude of agricultural crop losses to pests has not been measured adequately even in the most highly developed countries, but these losses are recognized as being substantial.