Contents - Faperta

1
Pest Management and the Environment
Introduction
Low productivity in agriculture is one of the major causes of poverty, food insecurity, and
malnutrition in developing countries, where agriculture is the driving force for broadbased
economic growth. By the year 2020, the world population will exceed 7.5 billion.
Nearly 1.2 billion people live in a state of absolute poverty [Food and Agriculture
Organization (FAO), 1999; Pinstrup-Andersen and Cohen, 2000]. The availability of land
for food production is decreasing over time, and such a decrease is expected to be much
greater in the developing than in the developed countries. Mexico, Eucador, Nigeria, and
Ethiopia had a per-capita cropland availability of 0.25 ha in 1990 compared to 0.10 ha in
Egypt, Kenya, Bangladesh, Vietnam, and China. By 2025, per-capita cropland availability
will be below 0.10 ha in countries such as Peru, Tanzania, Pakistan, Indonesia, and
Philippines (Myers, 1999). Such a decrease in availability of cropland will have major
implications for food security. The fate of small farm families in the short term will depend
on precision agriculture, which involves the use of right inputs at the right time. Therefore,
accelerated public investments are needed to facilitate agricultural growth through
high-yielding varieties resistant to biotic and abiotic stresses, environmentally friendly production
technology, availability of reasonably priced inputs, dissemination of information,
improved infrastructure and markets, primary education, and health care. These investments
need to be supported by good governance and an environment friendly policy for
sustainable management of natural resources.
As a result of using high-yielding varieties, irrigation, fertilizers, and pesticides, crop
productivity has increased fi ve times over the past fi ve decades. Productivity increases in
agriculture led by research and development formed the basis for rapid economic growth
and poverty reduction (McCalla and Ayers, 1997). Advances in crop improvement have
led to the “Green Revolution” becoming one of the scientifi cally most signifi cant events in
the history of mankind. Productivity increases in rice, wheat, and maize helped to surpass
in a decade the production accomplishments of the past century (Swaminathan, 2000).