Toward Sustainable Pest Control: Back to the Future in Case of Kazakhstan

Abstract

Problems related to pest control and pesticide use in agriculture can be found in similar forms across the world. Worldwide, crop production losses from agricultural pests average 35-40% before harvest and 10-15% after harvest (e.g. Oerke et al., 1994; Struik & Kropff, 2003). After the introduction of synthetic pesticides after World War II, agriculture in many countries became reliant on chemical pest control. In the 1960s, the environmental and health problems became apparent, as did the problems of pests becoming resistant to pesticides and the destruction of natural enemies leading to pest resurgence and secondary pest outbreaks. Farmers often use pesticides injudiciously, and find themselves caught on a pesticide treadmill, which increases the social, environmental and economic costs of chemical control (Bale et al., 2008; Carson, 1962; Kishi, 2005; Palladino, 1996; Perkins, 1982; Pretty & Waibel, 2005). These problems with pesticides gave way to the Integrated Pest Management (IPM) approach, which utilises ecological principles to manage agroecosystems in an economically and environmentally sustainable fashion (Kogan, 1998, 1999; Morse & Buhler, 1997; Struik & Kropff, 2003). IPM has become an alternative approach to exclusive reliance on pesticides as the sole means of pest control (Van Huis & Meerman, 1997). This change in approach has been quite widely accepted, although not universally.