Farm crops control

Insect pests of farm crops are difficult to control when necessary activities such as tillage weeding irrigation and harvesting increase the pest population and decrease the numbers of its natural enemies. 

Quy, R.J., Cowan, D.P., Haynes, P., Inglis, I.R. Swinney, T. 1992. The influence of stored food on the effectiveness of farm rat control. Proc. Br. Crop Prot. Conf. - Pests and Diseases, pp. 291—300. Thornton Heath British Crop Protection Council. 

Table 6.2 outlines some of the main diseases affecting farm crops and both chemical and non-chemical methods of control. 

Key words pests of farm crops, symptoms of pest damage, pest life-cycles, pest identification, methods of pest control. 

Sustainable Agriculture. The third factor that will influence the future of pesticide sales is the emphasis on sustainable agriculture systems that rely on more natural pest control methods and reduced pesticide usage. These are integrated systems that requke nutrients and crop protection chemicals from on-farm natural sources and cultural methods. Many current sustainable farms are site-specific systems that may depend on the soils in a... 

HCH, sometimes misleadingly termed benzene hexachloride (BHC), exists in a number of different isomeric forms of which the gamma isomer has valuable insecticidal properties. These were discovered during the 1940s, and HCH came to be widely used as an insecticide to control crop pests and certain ectoparasites of farm animals after the Second World War. Crude technical BHC, a mixture of isomers, was the first form of HCH to be marketed. In time, it was largely replaced by a refined product called lindane, containing 99% or more of the insecticidal gamma isomer. 

The first commercially available HCH insecticide sometimes misleadingly called benzene hexachloride (BHC) was a mixture of isomers, principally alpha HCH (65-70%), beta HCH (7-10%), and gamma HCH (14-15%). Most of the insecticidal activity was due to the gamma isomer (Figure 5.1), a purified preparation of which (>99% pure) was marketed as lindane. In Western countries, technical HCH was quickly replaced by lindane, but in some other countries (e.g., China) the technical product, which is cheaper and easier to produce, has continued to be used. HCH has been used as a seed dressing, a crop spray, and a dip to control ectoparasites of farm animals. It has also been used to treat timber against wood-boring insects. 

The use of chlorinated hydrocarbon insecticides for the control of insects affecting field crops and farm animals has created interest in the amounts of these materials that may be found in products intended for human and animal consumption. 

Owing to the prohibition of chemosynthetic pesticides under organic farming standards, there is a greatly reduced availability of intervention/treatment-based methods for disease and pest control in organic fruit production systems. The efficacy of the permitted biological control, extract or mineral element (e.g. S and Cu)-based crop protection products is also usually lower than of chemosynthetic pesticides. Permitted plant protection products show efficacies of between 60 and 80% while chemosynthetic fungicides and pesticides often have efficacy levels >95% (Tamm et al., 2004). 

In the European Union (EU) replacement of copper-based fungicides with other methods of disease control is a priority in organic farming policy (Anonymous, 2002). They were due to be prohibited by law for use in organic farming in the EU from March 2002 but the ban was delayed because of the increased risk of crop diseases and associated economic losses for organic producers in the medium to long term, until effective alternative... 

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