Pest Origins, Pesticides, and the History of Biological Control

The human population is large and still expanding. To gain more farmland, native ecosystems are being rapidly converted to human use, destroying forests, soil, and native plants and animals. To produce sufficient food, commercial and subsistence farming systems must be highly productive, but sustainable and nonpolluting. However, to preserve the world for the future, space must be left for wild animals and wild places. To do both of these things is the great challenge of the early twenty-first century. Part of the solution to this problem is biological control, the foundation on which sustainable, nonpolluting pest control for tomorrow’s farms must be built.