5 Simple Steps In Successful Pest Management

Pest Management isa very important part for the farmers to get high value in income for their yield. So, the the knowledge about pest management is a MUST for all farmers as long as they involve in this agriculture industry. So here we go about 5 Simple Steps In Successful Pest Management.


1) Correct identification (ID) :

For example :
     Insects - Pest ID services
     Weeds - ID resources manuals
     Diseases - Farmer Knowledge
     Nematodes - Symptoms from them
     Vertebrates or not

2) Understanding of pest and crop dynamics :

- Life cycle of pest or mode of attack
- Key Pest – Direct attack or indirect attack.
- Beneficial – Predators, pathogens, parasites
- Seasonality
- Pest Environment interactions

3) Monitoring – Methods to determine pest presence :

- Visual – Forecasting
- Scouting – Plant damage assessment
- Field mapping
- Traps, pheromones, light, sticky, pitfall, sweeps, spore traps, indicator plants

4) Economic thresholds :

- Don’t apply control action unless you expect loss from pest to exceed cost of control action.
- Economics threshold is pest density at which you need to implement some control measure to avoid economic loss.

5) Choice of optimum pest control options :

- Management decision or farmer’s decision to control pest
- This action must be based on: ID of pest, biology of pest and number present (for economic threshold)

Extra Tips On Pest Management Through cultural practices :

“Cultural practices” may be considered as specific crop production practices that may be implemented in the initial stages of farming to reduce the likelihood of insect pest infestation and damage.

“Cultural practices” that may be implemented to disrupt pest infestation of crops :
- Making Crop unavailable to pests in space and time.
- making the crop unacceptable to pests by interfering with host preference or location.
- Reducing pest survival on the crop by enhancing natural enemies.
- Altering the crop’s susceptibility to pests.

Key cultural practices used for insect management include :
- Farm or Site Location
- Crop rotation
- Soil quality management
- Sanitation
- Trap crops
- Tillage practices
- Host plant resistance
- Habitat manipulation or diversity
- Use of mulches
- Intercropping
- Alter planting or harvest date

- Emphasis – Practices to prevent or avoid pest problem before they occur, Not tactics to surpress pest after they become a problem.
- Effective deployment of cultural tactics is information intensive and it requires knowledge of pest-crop interactions and natural enemies of pest.

So now, you already know about 5 simple steps in successful pest management and tips for cultural practices. Here below some question strategy I included for you to clearly know about what you must do :

1) What will lose if I do nothing ?
2) What will I gain ?
3) How well will this action control the pest ?
4) Is this action legal ?
5) Will this action impact either positively or negatively other pest  ?

You must answer Them to your satisfaction before implementing a control.