Integrated Pest Management: What It Is, and Why It Should Be Implemented

Like so many terms that start off useful, then lose their meaning through years of misuse, Integrated Pest Management (usually shortened to IPM) seems to have come to mean many different things, and to have taken on an elusive definition. There seems to be quite a bit of confusion about what IPM really is, and I see a lot of things called IPM that are just not anything of the sort. 

The main goal of IPM is to achieve better control (both long and short-term) of pests, while reducing, or, if possible, eliminating the use of pesticides. It’s the second part of this goal which is often lost in current concepts of IPM. 

The loss of this focus has probably happened in part because businesses which have a vested financial and practical interest in pesticides not being reduced (such as chemical companies that make and market pesticides, or pest control companies that do not want to invest any time or effort to get away from spray-and-pray practices, and who do not benefit financially from actually providing long-term pest solutions) have nonetheless seen the importance of getting involved in a widely popular practice, and using the widely popular buzz-term, IPM. They have thus co-opted the term, shifting the emphasis of the concept to the use of new pesticides, or re-timing pesticides, or perhaps adding some common-sense cultural practices to the use of pesticides. 

Some of these practices may be an improvement over the practice of spraying on a schedule, whether or not any pests are detected, or the use of general  pesticides when a more specific one would suffice, but it is not IPM at its fullest potential, or its best use, and will result in minor reductions of pesticides, at best. The problem with operating under this misconception is that often pesticides are still used when they are not needed, or even when it is actually counterproductive to use them.

Since the 1970s, various governments at various levels have also gotten on the IPM bandwagon, and as always seems to happen, these various decrees, directives, and initiatives have further muddied the waters, and watered down the concept of IPM, in favor of the most powerful interests, which are not usually those of farmers, farm-workers, human health, the environment, the average homeowner, or the economy in general. 

It is true that the term IPM is not exactly the same thing as the term organic, mainly because IPM may include the limited and strategic use of chemical pesticides, but the goal of IPM is to control pests in a more organic way, striving to reduce the use of pesticides, with their many negative impacts.

So, before I get into what IPM really is, or at least what it should be, I need to address what may be a burning question on some readers’ minds right now. That is something like, “But, why are pesticides undesirable, really, and why should the goal be to reduce, or even eliminate them?” And some may have an accompanying question in their minds: “Are you some kind of extremist environmentalist?”

I can answer the second question with a simple “absolutely not!"  I do place a very high value on the environment, partly for practical and economic reasons, which I will discuss further, and I do think that environmentalists are right that, with many of our activities, we are degrading the environment at an alarming rate, and on a global scale. But I do not believe that a healthy environment is worth the cost of the loss of our liberty, much less mass starvation, disease, or poverty. No “solutions” that result in any of these things is a real solution.

In other words, I believe that protecting and restoring our environment on all levels has to be a voluntary human action, if it is to succeed at all, or even to be worth it.  I also don’t believe that protecting the environment, on the one hand, and producing a healthy, sustainable, and sufficient food supply, or protecting our homes and buildings from pests, or protecting human health against insect-borne diseases, on the other hand, are mutually exclusive efforts. In fact, I believe that in the long run, they must go hand in hand. This hand-in-hand effort of protecting the environment and the economy (in the broad sense of human welfare), doesn’t really require global action, or governmental directives. It can be done by individuals and businesses, one at a time, taking a holistic approach to all challenges, and making free and voluntary collective progress. Well thought-out and diligently executed IPM is an important part of this effort. 

Now, back to the first question: what, really, are the problems with pesticides, and why do we want to reduce their use? 

Speaking first environmentally … pesticides often do serious damage to the environment. In fact, I’ll go so far as to say that pesticides usually do harm to the local environment every time they’re used.  

They often make their way into groundwater, surface water, and soil, degrading our water supplies, or even in some cases making them impossible to use safely, and making our soils toxic. Bioaccumulation of pesticides in the ecosystem kills off animals toward the top of the food chain. The most famous example of this phenomenon is the effect of the pesticide DDT on populations of bald eagles. These birds of prey eat fish and small animals which themselves are not only directly contaminated by the sprayed chemical, but are also feeding on organisms which are feeding on organisms which are directly feeding on the chemical. This causes an accumulation, up the food chain, of the chemical in the predators of an ecosystem, which eventually kills them, or causes birth defects in the population (such as the thin egg shells of bald eagles caused by DDT).

The importance of pollinators is becoming more and more widely understood, as is the serious negative impact of pesticides on the populations of these pollinators. Whole crops are in danger of disappearing, if the pollinators they depend upon disappear.

The residues of pesticides appear not only in our water supplies, but in almost all of our food. Recently, evidence has surfaced that certain pesticides are contaminating many vaccines. Varying levels of dangerous pesticides have even been found in the air we breathe.

The negative impact on the health of farmers and farm workers by many pesticides has been well established, and the source of many controversies, lawsuits, and regulations.

Often growers, managers, and homeowners have the notion that the goal of reducing the use of pesticides is only to make wealthy environmentalists in big cities feel better at their expense, while making things unnecessarily harder on them, and on reaching their goals as efficiently as possible. 

I want to stress to growers, and anyone needing to control pests, that the reduction of unnecessary pesticides should be at least as important to them, for economic reasons, as it is to all of us, for environmental reasons.

Efforts at prevention and monitoring pest populations, diligence in proper identification of pests, the use of and further development of economic threshold levels, and the use of alternative, chemical-independent methods to control pests and weeds, pay off for the producer or the pest controller in a number of ways, in both the short and long term.

Some of the economic benefits of properly executing an IPM program and avoiding the unnecessary use of pesticides include:

1. Significantly lowering overhead costs (fewer pesticides need to be part of the annual budget).

   
   

2. Superior long-term control of pests, significantly saving money over time.

   
   

3. Lowering costs involved with the proper storage of pesticides, and proper disposal of empty pesticide containers and unused pesticide.

   
   

4. A healthier ecological balance, leading to long-term resistance in the system to pest problems, and avoidance of secondary pest problems. This is the real meaning of the word sustainability.

   
   

5. Avoiding possible resistance problems in populations of pests and weeds. Such resistance is a rapidly increasing problem in agriculture.

   
   

6. Reducing the potential for liability, whether the potential for damage to the environment, a neighbor’s crops. or the health of farm workers or other employees.

   
   

7. Avoiding re-entry intervals for people and livestock, with all the hassles and consumption of valuable time that such intervals may entail.

   
   

8. Similarly, avoiding pre-harvest intervals of pesticide applications, which may delay the harvest, sometimes at great cost.

These are just some of the environmental and economic advantages of reducing pesticide use. 

So what does an effective IPM program look like? Let's talk about that!