Agroecological Crop Protection: Concepts and a Case Study from Reunion

Abstract

In crop protection, chemical control rapidly revealed its limitations, as well as its possibilities, and alternative solutions to pest management problems have been recommended since at least the 1960s. A new strategy was developed under the rubric ‘integrated control’, envisaging the employment of a range of different control measures, constrained by their compatibility and the requirement for minimizing noxious effects on the wider environment. Despite these difficulties, a biological, then ecological, orientation has underlain the development of crop protection over the last 50 years (Pimentel, 1995; Walter, 2003). This process has been marked by multiple and diverse interpretations of the concept of IPM (Kogan, 1998). Numerous technical innovations have been proposed, without, however, bringing any really significant change in the management of pests in major crops (Lewis et al., 1997), due no doubt to an unrealistic approach to the complexities of the phenomena concerned. The debate has been re-animated recently, both by the spectacular success of the recent advances in biotechnology and by genuinely taking into account the need to preserve biological diversity. As much for socio-economic as for ecological reasons, this has given rise to a reexamination of farming systems as traditionally practiced, through an innovative agroecological approach (Dalgaard et al., 2003).