The War on Pests Isn’t Working. Here’s What Is.

There is something fascinating about the way we’ve waged war on pests. For decades we’ve treated them as the enemy, reaching for increasingly stronger chemicals in what has become a never-ending cycle. Spray. Resistance develops. Spray something stronger. Kill the beneficial insects as well. More pests appear. Spray again.

Somewhere along the way, we forgot to ask a much simpler question: Why are the pests there in the first place?

Throughout my experience both growing my own vegetables and working as a biological pest control consultant with commercial farmers across Zambia, there is one truth that is so simple that we somehow manage to overcomplicate it. Healthy soil grows healthy plants. I see it in my own vegetable garden. I see it on commercial pivots stretching for hundreds of hectares. The areas with hard, compacted, lifeless soils, soils that have been fed almost exclusively with synthetic fertilisers for years, where salts accumulate, and there is very little soil biology left to cycle nutrients and build structure, are almost always the areas with the greatest pest pressure.

Meanwhile, the healthier parts of the field often tell a different story. Perhaps it’s less used land, perhaps they’ve received compost, mulch or cover crops, or perhaps they’ve simply had years of thoughtful management that has fed the soil as a living ecosystem rather than just feeding the crop. The difference is remarkable. I can’t talk about pest management without starting here, because this is where pest management really begins.

Read the full article in Greenspace Zambia: https://www.greenspacezambia.com/post/the-war-on-pests-isn-t-working-here-s-what-is