Green to evergreen revolution: Ecological and evolutionary perspectives in pest management

Abstract

The experience and lessons learnt from the green revolution make it imperative that sustainable productivity requires strict adherence to agricultural practices which ensure integrity of the ecological foundations of agriculture. Use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, no doubt, result in enhanced productivity over short periods, but lead to degradation of soil health, freshwater and biodiversity in the long term. Evergreen revolution defined as achieving productivity in perpetuity 'without' causing ecological harm involves less dependence on chemical and more on biological inputs. With special reference to pest management, this article brings out how in a chemical pesticide-free environment, the predators and parasites (natural enemies of pests) keep the damage caused by crop pests 'below economic injury level'. Hence, culturing biopesticides (e.g. Trichogramma chilonis, Trathala flavo-orbitalis) and releasing them in the crop fields provide 'pronature', 'pro-poor' and 'pro-women' solution to reducing loss by borers in cotton, brinjal, etc. When these are done by landless women who are facilitated to undertake production of biopesticides as an ecoenterprise, the famine of rural livelihood is also tackled. Scientific, environmental and socio-economic aspects of biopesticides have been briefly presented here.