More than 1 billion pounds of pesticides are used in the United States every year. These pesticides and chemicals serve an important purpose, but they can also have terrible side effects and results down the road.
That’s why agriculture needs sustainable solutions to help ensure the following generations are healthy and safe, all while maintaining crop yields and output. But what are some of these sustainable solutions?
Keep reading to learn more.
What Are Sustainable Solutions in Agriculture?
There are many ways of doing integrated pest control to help with sustainable agriculture. The goal is to cut pests down so that they don’t eat crops, helping farmers get more yield from their crops and stay afloat.
There are three main tenants of modern sustainability with agriculture. The first is to accurately identify pests, their effects, and possible solutions. This allows a more targeted approach, which can help reduce the overuse of chemicals.
The second tenant is the idea that farmers and ranchers don’t need to control all pests at all times. Some insects don’t damage enough crops to be worth the cost of spraying. Using the best pesticide, such as those produced by Marrone Bio Innovations, can help farmers target specific pests without killing everything.
This is why it’s important to survey the land before deciding to spray it with pesticides. If certain insects have passed a particular threshold that reduces overall crop revenues, it’s time to take care of them. But if there aren’t enough to affect the crops, a farmer can hold off until the pesticide is necessary.
The third tenant of a sustainable solution is to use preventative measures before pesticides are needed. These measures include draining water out of areas to prevent swamps, removing weeds, and growing plants that are resistant to pests. There are quite a few varieties of pest-resistant crops that require far fewer pesticides to still produce crops!
Why Is It Important?
Over time, the overuse of pesticides will cause pests to become more resistant to these chemicals. It can also create more chemical pollution in the soil, water, and air.
This pest resistance and chemical pollution can create a vicious cycle. As pests survive the pesticides, more chemicals are needed. As farmers use more chemicals, the ecosystem can get overwhelmed.
This can have devastating effects on the people, animals, and plants in a region. That’s one reason why sustainable pest control is so important for maintaining a region’s health.
Besides that, overly aggressive use of pesticides can often have unintended side effects. For example, killing off one type of insect will remove its effects from the ecosystem. This means any roles it plays, as well as other creatures it feeds, will now be changed.
Earth’s ecosystems are often far more delicately balanced than people realize. Killing off or greatly reducing one species can cause a chain reaction that cascades into disaster. This is why it’s so important to ensure that chemicals and pesticides are used sustainably.
Learn More About Outdoor Advancements
Sustainable solutions for pest control are very important. But they aren’t the only important aspect of agriculture! There’s a lot that goes into growing food and helping the environment while still keeping businesses afloat.
So if you’d like to learn more about agriculture, gardening, and other topics, be sure to check out the rest of our blog! We have plenty of great articles on a wide variety of subjects to help you learn more about how we all can improve our little corner of the world.
