Integrated pest management was imposed on farmers under the sustainable use directive. More commonly referred to as IPM, many see it as yet another sheet to be filled in or another box to be ticked. I regard it as something different and with the help of research and experience, it should be used to help take out an amount of expense from an excessively costly business.

For me, IPM is about doing different things that either reduce or replace the requirement for some inputs. Perhaps this is most easily achieved in the case of insects and insecticides, because we can accept that there are natural balances that can be promoted to help maintain the natural order of things.

We all make decisions that impact on standard management which invoke IPM without sometimes realising that we are doing this. That’s farming!

The easy IPM decisions are the choice of variety, the seeding rate, the planting date and the slot in rotation. These can all impact on the subsequent chemical requirement through pressure from diseases, weeds and pests.

And so, to some degree, farmers can influence the pressure imposed on them by decisions they take and perhaps there are more things that can be done to influence this more in farmers’ favour.

As costs expand beyond the range of income potential, it is essential that individual growers begin to do things that help to take cost out of their farming system. Sometimes this may require doing things differently; sometimes it may require doing nothing at all. The challenge is to know the difference.

The one thing that is certain is that we cannot continue on the road that requires a chemical input to solve every new problem. And the real challenge is that such problems are being made worse by the way we farm today. Failure to act will have very serious consequences, but the challenge is what to do.

For years, we have been attempting to reduce costs, but this has mainly been done by cutting input rates rather than removing the problem. And in many instances, other things that we do often exacerbate our problems. But what do we do – what can we do?

The need to understand nature

Last week, I met with an IPM expert from the US, Dr Jonathan Lundgren. Jonathan and others were speaking at a seminar organised by Precision Nutrition in Carlingford. He is an entomologist by training (works with insects) and he is now very much an agroecologist, ie he specialises in promoting full biological systems so as not to give one species the upper hand over another which will allow it to become a pest that we have to control.

This does not mean that we do not use pesticides, Jonathan emphasised, but we only use them where absolutely necessary and where cost effectiveness is well proven. What it does mean is that there are many other things which must be considered in our farming systems which influence whether a pest gets the upper hand, or not, to become a problem.

Perhaps the take-all decline mechanism is the best example that we are aware of as a natural equilibrium system that we can utilise to keep the soil borne take-all fungus at bay.

While we do not know exactly how this works, we are very aware that it does work and some growers try to use it commercially to increase the amount of wheat grown in a farming system.

There are also very many other examples of natural systems which act to keep a balance between species to help prevent any one from becoming disproportionately large so as to become a pest.

Again, we are aware of a number of natural predators for aphids, such as the ladybird and its larva, hoverfly larvae, the lacewing, etc. These can very effectively act to keep down aphid numbers in most of the season, but if conditions favour an explosion in aphid multiplication then the lag time for the predators to build could mean ineffective control for a period. But then if the predators are killed, the pest population can recover more rapidly.

All about balance

What Jonathan refers to requires a significant change in how we think and what we do. He emphasises the necessity to keep a better balance in the total community of organisms to help prevent problems.

Jonathan is CEO of a new research farm facility called Blue Dasher Farms America. It appears to have arisen as a result of very many people wanting change in our general attitude to food and the environment.

It is financed by what he called crowd funding, where many people give a little towards a common cause as distinct from one or two big donations. This model gives him the freedom to follow the issues that many people find important.

His ecological research focuses heavily on conserving healthy biological communities within agroecosystems. Doing this requires having little or no soil disturbance and increasing the general biodiversity in cropland.

His basic premise begins with no cultivation in a cropping system. He sees this as important in terms of not disturbing the simple habitats of the huge range of organisms that are interdependent in nature to help maintain its balance.

This can be taken literally and be an instant turnoff to those who believe that the plough is the only consistent option over time for successful crop establishment. This is understandable, but it is important to put such comments in perspective.

The plough has proven itself to be a versatile tool and it can have a very important part to play in terms of weed and disease burial and also in terms of loosening the soil in the root zone, especially in worn tight soils.

Healthy soil is key

It is important to remember that the major challenge for the future is to get our soils back into good working order to enable them to deliver the genetic potential that is in-built in modern varieties. This requires a number of different actions, but they hinge around the addition of organic matter to soil to help encourage biological activity.

This is critical in all soils, regardless of the type of establishment systems used and whether soil is inverted or not. Improving our soils is key to survival because we need these extra tonnes. It is the absolute starting point for profitable farming.

Once our soil is in good nick and healthy, reduced soil disturbance is easier, or at least more possible, than it is today on much of our land base. We have had many failures in non-inversion systems because you need your soil in good condition for these systems to work, but most farmers changed the system in the hope of using it to improve their soils.

It will help in this regard in time, but the addition of organic matter is key to unlocking the potential of your soil.

Healthy soil is a lot of things at the same time. It is physically well structured and thus enables any form of primary cultivation while widening the working window because the soil is more friable.

Good soil is also biologically active and this helps it to regenerate itself following natural degradation or damage to restore a nice workable and friable structure.

The soil biology also helps break down organic matter to release and recycle nutrients to fuel the biologicals systems and new crop growth with higher yield potential.

Healthier food

Jonathan said that while healthy soil is very much part of such systems, the production of healthier food is also a significant benefit.

While some commentators associate healthy food with processing methodology, there can be definite differences between food samples as to their nutrient value.

The comment is often made that modern industrialised farming systems have significantly reduced the nutritive value of many of our crop-based foods. Add to this the belief that the food value has been bred out as plant breeders concentrate on agronomic characteristics to produce commercial varieties.

Interestingly, another speaker, Dr Jill Clapperton, spoke to me briefly on the topic of food quality and nutrient density. Jill is an expert in nutrient metabolism and she told me that she had recently grown a number of very old wheat types from Turkey, which possibly date back to a time prior to the domestication of wheat as we know it today.

Having grown all of these types on the same site, in Canada I think, she said that the nutrient density of the grain produced was massively variable from these wheat types whcic evolved naturally.

Indeed, she described the grain produced by some of these types as having virtually zero nutritional value, while others were very good.

So variability in nutrient density or value is not just a modern occurrence, but it is likely to be higher in crops grown on a balanced healthy soil. But perhaps the bigger question is how can farmers make this pay in an era where all basic foods are traded as commodities.

Researching the system

Jonathan said that Blue Dasher Farm is a for-profit operation, but there is still a significant challenge to make a profit from a 53 acre farm unit. This could not be done with broad-acre crops, so different crops were grown which carried much higher value. In this scenario, brain power became more important than horsepower.

Enterprise stacking is seen as very important for farm finances, Jonathan said. And these stacks come in many forms, some of which would be difficult to control in a bigger farm unit.

Rather than growing grains, they decided to grow borage as a high-value combinable crop and hubam clover as a source of forage and fertility.

Both of these produce high-value produce, but both also support another enterprise, honey production.

This is what is meant by enterprise stacking, as more than one source of income can be derived from a single crop.

The farm produces bees and Jonathan is very conscious of the many environmental challenges that impact on them, especially the negative impacts of routine prophylactic insecticide use.

Blue Dasher also produces a variety of perennial fruit and nut crops and vegetables for sale directly to end users.

He also said that small animals (pigs, goats, chickens, etc) are an important component of sustainable farming as they can be used to consume waste while producing meat and other products (eggs, milk etc).

Jonathan even said that they have ducks on the farm because they are very good at mopping up slugs where they become a problem. The ducks convert the slugs into eggs and meat, while preventing excessive plant damage.

The need for biodiversity

This method of farming might seem traditional, but in fact it is being newly evolved for the future. We in Ireland just cannot continue to rely on chemicals that continue to cost more because we use more.

Our chemical tools are reducing in number and our cost of production frequently exceeds our output value. We must change in some direction.

Jonathan puts a lot of emphasis on zero cultivation methods of crop production and it is easy to understand why. All the little critters need to keep their homes intact if they are to proliferate to help keep down numbers in the pest species.

Perhaps there is a lot to be said for untilled or perhaps uncropped field margins to allow all of these beneficials to multiply.

Jonathan commented that biodiversity of plant species is needed to provide biodiversity in insect species. And this is essential to help keep pest numbers under control or at levels that make chemical intervention uneconomic.

BYDV prevention

In this context, our conversation drifted to aphids and BYDV infection. The need to control aphids is a numbers game and we can use thresholds to advise treatment or not.

However, when a small number of aphids can carry a virus with a much more serious consequence, then a single aphid can be a serious issue. In this regard, Jonathan commented that a healthy plant can cope better with a virus and be less affected by it, just like a healthy person and the flu virus.

Our conversation progressed. Most growers would certainly prefer that no tangible virus infection would take place in their crop, so we began to speak about where infection comes from.

If we knew the location of the main infection reservoirs for the virus (volunteer plants on stubbles are obviously one of these), what could we do to encourage natural aphid predators in these areas to help prevent aphid build-up and dispersion?

As of now, this might seem like an unlikely solution to the BYDV problem, but if all of our insecticides were ineffective, we would look more hopefully at such options. We must begin to look at the species that produce problems in our crops in a different way. The more diversity we can promote, the lower the chance that any one species will multiply to become a pest.

Understanding nature

Our major challenge with IPM is to understand nature better so that we can use it to our advantage in farming to decrease the number of problems that require intervention.

We must concede that we have more problems now than we used to do, but we seldom ask why this is the case. Nature is a network of interconnected existences, so when we interfere with one we affect another and our problems increase.

While we are not in a time where anyone can advise an Irish grower on such matters, many growers accept the general principles involved and they are attempting to progress slowly in this general direction.

As with many other things in nature, change is not instant and benefits will be slow to emerge. And we will always need farm proof that research results can be replicated in practice.