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Permaculture view on pestWhat is a pest? Its a fairly nasty name, and when applied to a human being,suggests the person is an unwelcome irritation someone uninvited and in yourprecious space. Its a very subjective opinion, and some could say ratherself-centred. When applied to an insect, the connotation is similar we use it todescribe a creature that consumes what we want to consume, and that appears tocompete with us in the harvesting of our crops. We just do not like sharing our foodwith other creatures.

The determination to say hands off! to these little guys has conjured up averitable smorgasbord of chemicals mostly produced with tremendous energyexpenditure, and from a waning supply of fossil fuels. But, despite decades ofpesticide usage we seem to be losing the battle our pest problems are not onlyincreasing, but the immensely complicated interactions of these insects with othercreatures, and with other aspects of our ecology, are creating new problems inever-widening circles.

Anyone thats spent any time in the field knows that insects can be attracted to aplant for two main reasons:

1) Lack of beneficial insects:

Assassin bug feeding onColorado potato beetle larva

In the wild the great diversity of plant types enables a correspondingly diversearray of creatures to live within close proximity to each other. Each insect has itsown housing requirements, and the modern sterile and heavily mechanised form ofagriculture significantly reduces the variety of insects that can survive in a givenfield. In other words, the only insects that will prosper in a field of cotton, arethose that like cotton! Monocrop farming removes mixed grasses, hedges, woodlands,leaf and other decaying plant litter, and presents an enormous single-course feastto a few select insects in an environment where their natural enemies are unable toset up residence. After chemical sprays have done their worst, the fasterreproductive rate of pest insects allows them to rapidly rebound and they reboundinto a predator-free environment.

2) Poor plant health:

Pests do not arise because of a deficiency of pesticide in the environment anymore than headaches result from a lack of aspirin in the blood system. We getheadaches because of the way in which we conduct our lives, and we get pests in thefields because of the way we manage them. Agriculture & Energy

Sick plantsattract pests

The direct connection between sick plants and pest attack is a significant butunder-recognised point. I remember being stunned when I saw this in action for thefirst time. I studied organic biological horticulture some years ago, and not longafter a lesson that covered the connection between plant health and pest imbalances,I saw the evidence clearly demonstrated in my own student garden.

In my patch, amongst other vegetables, I had a couple of neat rows of broccoli probably about 30 plants in total. One day I noticed three of the plants, only, wereseverely stunted in size compared to the others. These unhealthy individuals wereall growing next to each other in the same section of one particular row. The causefor their ill health could have been one of a number of possibilities but giventhat their neighbours were all doing fine, it was likely a very localised problem ofcompaction or contamination of the soil immediately below these individuals. Anyway,

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Permaculture view on pestthe sickly nature of these particular plants attracted a veritable army of tinyblack bugs that were chowing down on them like nothing else. But, this is where wehit weirdsville although each of these sick plants hosted several dozen hungrylittle insects, their feeding frenzy completely and entirely ignored the healthybroccoli standing only inches away! Even after a very close examination of thehealthy plants, I couldnt find a solitary bug! Being a student garden (i.e. forexperimental purposes), I left the sick plants where they were to monitor theprogress of these insects. The result: the sick plants withered away (with the helpof these bugs), and the healthy broccoli got on with their lives without any insectinterference whatsoever and I had a terrific broccoli harvest at the end of theyear. Where did the bugs go? Who knows! Off to rid the world of other sick plants Iguess.

The pests are my professors, wrote Sir Albert Howard, founding father of theorganics movement. Pest attack showed him where the soil fertility needed attention.Plants growing in fertile soil have healthy immune systems and can repel pestattack. Where this doesnt happen, the soil is unbalanced. Correcting the problemrestores plant health and the pests depart. JourneyToForever

Essentially, pests are not pests at all. They are merely indicators of underlyingproblems. When we douse our plants with chemicals to get rid of pests, all we aredoing is dealing with symptoms, but not the cause, of a deeper biological issue.

Where we think were being smart and high-tech, were actually taking a verysimplistic and narrow-minded approach. In fact were being downright stupid (Imean, wheres the logic in pouring poisons onto our food?).

If your garden ecosystem is healthy and balanced, you wont have insectproblemsremember insect pests only attack sick and weak plants that need to beeliminated. As gardeners, we can learn to use such damage as a symptom thatsomething is amiss and that either a specific plant or the ecosystem as a wholeneeds more attention. WorldWise

Additionally, pesticides not only kill insects, but they, of course, effect planthealth which, in turn, attracts more pests!

Pesticides can also lead to imbalances in plant metabolism, resulting in thedisruption of protein synthesis and the buildup of free amino acids within theplant. Such buildups have been shown to attract pests. From the Ground Up,Rethinking Industrial Agriculture, p. 18.

Simplistic Management

So, although we are tasked with the role of managing our gardens and farms, wereusing a very heavy-handed and simplistic approach. We regard fellow organisms asenemies (we call them pests or weeds). Instead of developing skills ofobservation and recognising important symbiotic relationships, we try to buy oursolutions in a bottle. Not only is this not advanced or clever but itsself-defeating. If youve put two and two together, youll have come to realise thatinsects are serving an important role in culling out food that would be lesshealthful to us, and showing us where problems in our soil lie.

The heads of chemical companies know full well that cooperating with the laws ofnature will render their products obsolete. But corporate self-preservation is

promoted over principle.Unfortunately, we have allowed powerful bureaucracies to develop that are only

able to generate and implement these specialist (simplistic) solutions. Also, itis questionable whether they are even anxious to solve the problems in thelong-term, as this would deprive them of their power. It is little wonder thatalternative lines of research are systematically stifled. Agriculture & Energy

So, to summarise we create imbalances by reducing diversity and ignoring soilhealth. These imbalances create pest problems. We ignore the root causes, and

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Permaculture view on pestinstead begin an impossible cycle of destruction pouring poisons on our food, ourland (and which inevitably end up in our water). This approach fails (doh!), but wepersevere with the destructive mind set regardless resulting in a dangeroustinkering with the building blocks of life, in the form of genetic engineering andnow even synthetic biology.

A complete waste of energy,resulting in poor health too!Why do we bother?Ask the corporations

Our political and economic systems, by only requiring us to examine short-termrelationships, have deluded us into believing that organisms and environments can beforced to conform to artificial and not ecological laws. The tendency for manyharmful effects to take a long time to manifest themselves has encouraged thisattitude. However, the problems that we now encounter are symptomatic of thisapproach. Most of the solutions being proposed are developed without considerationfor their broader or long-term effects.

The generation of these solutions to by-pass nature may be regarded simply asirresponsible dreaming. Unfortunately, we are indulging in this type of dreaming

when we imagine that we can solve problems of infertile soils, pests, diseases anddeficient foods simply by means of inorganic fertilizers, pesticides, antibioticsand food supplements, respectively. The proposal of these kinds of solutions issymptomatic of a science trapped in the stranglehold of inductive logic andreductionism. Adherence to these approaches is preventing us from dealing with thecauses of our problems. Agriculture & Energy

You can make a difference! Share this article with others, and please consider theimpact of your purchases. Buy organic produce from small-scale sustainably orientedgrowers that promote biodiversity in their operations and, if possible, supplementwhat you buy with produce from your own garden. Rather than unhealthy, tastelessfruit and vegetables (that often manage to go directly from unripe to rotten,skipping the edible stage in between), youll enjoy healthy taste sensations thatgive you increased vigor and reduce your risk of cancer and other diseases.

We seriously need to shrink the power of these companies, and reduce their abilityto control and pervert the natural systems of food production. Around 90% of theinsects in the average garden are beneficial insects. Dont kill them.

According to David Pimentel, entomologist at Cornell University, over the past50 years pesticide use has increased 30 times (and toxicity of pesticides more thana hundredfold), yet twice as much of the harvest is lost to insects today. Chemicalwarfare is not only destructive to the environment and bad for your health, its alosing battle. Vegsource

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