Permaculture view on pest

What is a ‘pest’? It’s a fairly nasty name, and when applied to a human being,
suggests the person is an unwelcome irritation – someone uninvited and in your
precious space. It’s a very subjective opinion, and some could say rather
self-centred. When applied to an insect, the connotation is similar – we use it to
describe a creature that consumes what we want to consume, and that appears to
compete with us in the harvesting of our crops. We just do not like sharing our food
with other creatures.
The determination to say “hands off!” to these little guys has conjured up a
veritable smorgasbord of chemicals – mostly produced with tremendous energy
expenditure, and from a waning supply of fossil fuels. But, despite decades of
pesticide usage we seem to be losing the battle – our ‘pest’ problems are not only
increasing, but the immensely complicated interactions of these insects with other
creatures, and with other aspects of our ecology, are creating new problems in
ever-widening circles.

Anyone that’s spent any time in the field knows that insects can be attracted to a
plant for two main reasons:
1) Lack of beneficial insects:

Assassin bug feeding on

Colorado potato beetle larva

In the wild the great diversity of plant types enables a correspondingly diverse
array of creatures to live within close proximity to each other. Each insect has its
own housing requirements, and the modern ’sterile’ and heavily mechanised form of
agriculture significantly reduces the variety of insects that can survive in a given
field. In other words, the only insects that will prosper in a field of cotton, are
those that like cotton! Monocrop farming removes mixed grasses, hedges, woodlands,
leaf and other decaying plant litter, and presents an enormous single-course feast
to a few select insects in an environment where their natural enemies are unable to
set up residence. After chemical sprays have done their worst, the faster
reproductive rate of pest insects allows them to rapidly rebound – and they rebound
into a predator-free environment.

2) Poor plant health:

Pests do not arise because of a deficiency of pesticide in the environment any

more than headaches result from a lack of aspirin in the blood system. We get
headaches because of the way in which we conduct our lives, and we get pests in the
fields because of the way we manage them. – Agriculture & Energy

Sick plants
attract pests

The direct connection between sick plants and pest attack is a significant but
under-recognised point. I remember being stunned when I saw this in action for the
first time. I studied organic biological horticulture some years ago, and not long
after a lesson that covered the connection between plant health and pest imbalances,
I saw the evidence clearly demonstrated in my own student garden.

In my patch, amongst other vegetables, I had a couple of neat rows of broccoli –

probably about 30 plants in total. One day I noticed three of the plants, only, were
severely stunted in size compared to the others. These unhealthy individuals were
all growing next to each other in the same section of one particular row. The cause
for their ill health could have been one of a number of possibilities – but given
that their neighbours were all doing fine, it was likely a very localised problem of
compaction or contamination of the soil immediately below these individuals. Anyway,
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the sickly nature of these particular plants attracted a veritable army of tiny
black bugs that were chowing down on them like nothing else. But, this is where we
hit weirdsville – although each of these sick plants hosted several dozen hungry
little insects, their feeding frenzy completely and entirely ignored the healthy
broccoli standing only inches away! Even after a very close examination of the
healthy plants, I couldn’t find a solitary bug! Being a student garden (i.e. for
experimental purposes), I left the sick plants where they were to monitor the
progress of these insects. The result: the sick plants withered away (with the help
of these bugs), and the healthy broccoli got on with their lives without any insect
interference whatsoever – and I had a terrific broccoli harvest at the end of the
year. Where did the bugs go? Who knows! Off to rid the world of other sick plants I
guess.

“The pests are my professors,” wrote Sir Albert Howard, founding father of the
organics movement. Pest attack showed him where the soil fertility needed attention.
Plants growing in fertile soil have healthy immune systems and can repel pest
attack. Where this doesn’t happen, the soil is unbalanced. Correcting the problem
restores plant health and the pests depart. – JourneyToForever

Essentially, pests are not pests at all. They are merely indicators of underlying
problems. When we douse our plants with chemicals to get rid of ‘pests’, all we are
doing is dealing with symptoms, but not the cause, of a deeper biological issue.
Where we think we’re being ’smart’ and ‘high-tech’, we’re actually taking a very
simplistic and narrow-minded approach. In fact – we’re being downright stupid (I
mean, where’s the logic in pouring poisons onto our food?).
If your garden ecosystem is healthy and balanced, you won’t have insect
problems—remember insect pests only attack sick and weak plants that need to be
eliminated. As gardeners, we can learn to use such damage as a “symptom” that
something is amiss and that either a specific plant or the ecosystem as a whole
needs more attention. – WorldWise
Additionally, pesticides not only kill insects, but they, of course, effect plant
health – which, in turn, attracts more pests!

Pesticides can also lead to imbalances in plant metabolism, resulting in the

disruption of protein synthesis and the buildup of free amino acids within the
plant. Such buildups have been shown to attract pests. – From the Ground Up,
Rethinking Industrial Agriculture, p. 18.

Simplistic Management

So, although we are tasked with the role of managing our gardens and farms, we’re
using a very heavy-handed and simplistic approach. We regard fellow organisms as
enemies (we call them ‘pests’ or ‘weeds’). Instead of developing skills of
observation and recognising important symbiotic relationships, we try to buy our
’solutions’ in a bottle. Not only is this not ‘advanced’ or ‘clever’ – but it’s
self-defeating. If you’ve put two and two together, you’ll have come to realise that
insects are serving an important role in culling out food that would be less
healthful to us, and showing us where problems in our soil lie.

The heads of chemical companies know full well that cooperating with the laws of
nature will render their products obsolete. But corporate self-preservation is
promoted over principle.

Unfortunately, we have allowed powerful bureaucracies to develop that are only

able to generate and implement these “specialist (simplistic) solutions.” Also, it
is questionable whether they are even anxious to solve the problems in the
long-term, as this would deprive them of their power. It is little wonder that
alternative lines of research are systematically stifled. – Agriculture & Energy
So, to summarise – we create imbalances by reducing diversity and ignoring soil
health. These imbalances create pest problems. We ignore the root causes, and
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instead begin an impossible cycle of destruction – pouring poisons on our food, our
land (and which inevitably end up in our water). This approach fails (doh!), but we
persevere with the destructive mind set regardless – resulting in a dangerous
tinkering with the building blocks of life, in the form of genetic engineering and
now even synthetic biology.

A complete waste of energy,

resulting in poor health too!
Why do we bother?
Ask the corporations…

Our political and economic systems, by only requiring us to examine short-term

relationships, have deluded us into believing that organisms and environments can be
forced to conform to artificial and not ecological laws. The tendency for many
harmful effects to take a long time to manifest themselves has encouraged this
attitude. However, the problems that we now encounter are symptomatic of this
approach. Most of the solutions being proposed are developed without consideration
for their broader or long-term effects.
The generation of these solutions to by-pass nature may be regarded simply as
irresponsible dreaming. Unfortunately, we are indulging in this type of dreaming
when we imagine that we can solve problems of infertile soils, pests, diseases and
deficient foods simply by means of inorganic fertilizers, pesticides, antibiotics
and food supplements, respectively. The proposal of these kinds of solutions is
symptomatic of a science trapped in the stranglehold of inductive logic and
reductionism. Adherence to these approaches is preventing us from dealing with the
causes of our problems. – Agriculture & Energy

You can make a difference! Share this article with others, and please consider the
impact of your purchases. Buy organic produce from small-scale sustainably oriented
growers that promote biodiversity in their operations – and, if possible, supplement
what you buy with produce from your own garden. Rather than unhealthy, tasteless
fruit and vegetables (that often manage to go directly from unripe to rotten,
skipping the edible stage in between), you’ll enjoy healthy ‘taste sensations’ that
give you increased vigor and reduce your risk of cancer and other diseases.

We seriously need to shrink the power of these companies, and reduce their ability
to control and pervert the natural systems of food production. Around 90% of the
insects in the average garden are beneficial insects. Don’t kill them.
According to David Pimentel, entomologist at Cornell University, over the past
50 years pesticide use has increased 30 times (and toxicity of pesticides more than
a hundredfold), yet twice as much of the harvest is lost to insects today. Chemical
warfare is not only destructive to the environment and bad for your health, it’s a
losing battle. – Vegsource

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