Question

(a) How do organic farmers control pests? Give two examples.
(b) State the difference in their approach from that of conventional pest control methods.

Answer 1

Hint: The human civilization has been established and supported by agriculture. Most of the human population has depended upon agriculture for their food. Organic farming is the use of natural fertilizers and natural methods of managing the pests and insects for increasing the yield of the crop and plants.

Complete answer:
The two methods by which organic farmers control pests are:
> Organic farmers use biocontrol agents which are those organisms that are employed to control some harmful organisms like pathogenic organisms and pests of the plants. Generally pest control is done by the use of chemical pesticides and the trend is increasing year after year. These chemical pesticides are divided into a number of categories like weedicides, insecticides and rodenticides.
> The other technique used by organic farmers to deal with plant diseases and pests are developing resistances against them through plant breeding techniques. For example, developing maize with high aspartic acid, low nitrogen and sugar contents as these help in providing maize stems protection against maize stem borers.

(a) The approach used by the organic farmers is different from those of the conventional farmers as they use natural fertilizers that does not cause any harm to the environment. Also the pesticides, weedicides and insecticides used by conventional farmers are non-biodegradable in nature and cause pollution and also leads to biomagnification. Organic farmers on the other hand do not use such chemicals and pollutants as they keep the insects at manageable levels using complex systems and methods. They believe that each and every component of the ecosystem is important for its proper regulation and functioning.

Note: The stress on the agricultural sector is developing day-by-day in developing countries like India as the population there is increasing continuously at a high rate. So to increase the yield of crops, farmers have increased the use of chemicals which is not good in the long run. Organic farming is the more sustainable solution for this problem.