Biological Control and Agricultural Modernization: Towards Resolution of Some Contradictions
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Agriculture and Human Values 14: 303±310, 1997. c 1997 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands. Biological control and agricultural modernization: Towards resolution of some contradictions Miguel A. Altieri, Peter M. Rosset and Clara I. Nicholls ESPM-Division of Insect Biology, University of California, Berkeley, USA Accepted in revised form June 12, 1997 Abstract. An emergent contradiction in the contemporary development of biological control is that of the prevalence of the substitution of periodic releases of natural enemies for chemical insecticides and the dominance of biotechnologically developed transgenic crops. Input substitution leaves in place the monoculture nature of agroecosystems, which in itself is a key factor in encouraging pest problems. Biotechnology, now under corporate control, creates more dependency and can potentially lead to Bt resistance, thus excluding from the market a key biopesticide. Approaches for putting back biological control into the hands of farmers (from artesanal biotechnology for grassroots biopesticide production Cuban style to farmer-to-farmer IPM networks, etc.) have been developed as a way to create a farmer centered approach to biological control Key words: Biological control, Environmental policy, IPM programs Miguel A. Altieri is Associate Professor, University of California, Berkeley. General Coordinator of the UNDP sponsored program Sustainable Agriculture Networking and Extension (SANE) promoting capacity building in agro- ecology in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Chairman of the CGiAR-NGO committee to encourage partnerships among NGOs and International Agricultural Research Centers to scale-up agroecological strategies. Peter M. Rosset is the Executive Director of Food First ± The Institute for Food and Development Policy, based in Oakland, California. Among the books he has published are Agroecology (McGraw-Hill, 1990), The Greening of the Revolution: Cuba's Experiment with Organic Agriculture (Ocean Press, 1994), and A Cautionary Tale: Failed US Development Policy in Central America (Lynne Rienner Publishers/Food First Development Series, 1996). The Institute for Food and Development Policy has an on-going US-Cuba exchange program on organic farming, coordinated with the non-governmental Cuban Organic Farming Association (ACAO). Clara I. Nicholls is a Colombian entomologist, technical advisor of the Consorcio LatinoAmericano sobre Agroecologia y Desarrollo (CLADES), and a graduate student of entomology at UC Davis, conducting research on diversi®cation strategies of large scale vineyards for sustainable pest management. Introduction habitat management (Altieri, 1994). As envisioned by the early proponents and practitioners, biological control Biological control was originally de®ned, as ªthe action of was to become a self-sustaining strategy, through which parasites, predators, or pathogens in maintaining another farmers relied for pest control on the ecological services organism's population density at a lower average than provided by the ªrestoredº functional biodiversity, thus would occur in their absenceº (De Bach, 1964). As such, avoiding dependence on costly pesticides. Historically biological control distinguishes itself from all other forms this has been the case worldwide, with a number of pests of pest control by acting in a density-dependent manner, brought under permanent control, since the successful that is: natural enemies increase in intensity and destroy a control of the cottony-cushion scale Icerya purchasi in larger portion of the population as the density of that pop- California with the vedalia beetle, Rodolia cardinalis, ulation increases, and vice-versa (De Bach and Rosen, which was imported from Australia in 1888 (van Driesche 1991). In a strict ecological sense, applied biological and Bellows, 1996). control can be considered a strategy to restore functional The combined savings attributed to the California agri- biodiversity in agroecosystems by adding, through classi- cultural industry from seven major classical biological cal and/or augmentative biocontrol techniques, ªmissingº control programs conducted between 1928 and 1979 was entomophagous insects or by enhancing naturally occur- estimated at about US$ 20 million, not accounting for ring predators and parasitoids through conservation and in¯ation and/or discount (Hagen and Franz, 1973; van den 304 MIGUEL A. ALTIERI,PETER M. ROSSER AND CLARA I. NICOLLS Bosch et al., 1982). Such environmental bene®ts, how- without challenging the monoculture structure of agricul- ever, have rarely been accounted for in normal economic tural systems, greatly diminishes the potential to develop analysis of agricultural technology. a more sustainable agriculture. By only addressing envi- This natural phenomenon of pest population regulation ronmental concerns, biological control as an input substi- created by human management through the enhancement tution approach offers little hope of either reversing the of the interaction of biological control agents, plants, and rapid degradation of the resource base for future produc- herbivores provided the ecological basis for what in the tion, or of resolving the current pro®t squeeze and debt 1970s became known as insect pest management (IPM) trap in which the world's farmers are caught (Rosset and strategies (van den Bosch et al., 1982). Under the original Altieri, 1997). IPM vision, agroecosystems were to be diversi®ed and We further argue that biological control (especially managed to enhance natural control and pesticides would classical biological control) is not free of issues relating only be used in ªemergency situations.º Unfortunately, to social equity. For over two centuries, industrialized such a vision slowly eroded and IPM, increasingly under countries have freely appropriated genetic and other pressures from the agrochemical and now the biotech- biological resources from developing countries for agri- nological industry, came to mean something more like cultural production without compensating them for such Integrated Pesticide Management; that is, the justi®ca- services (Kloppenberg and Kleinman, 1987). In our view, tion of pesticide use only when pest populations surpass a the exchange and importation of natural enemies is liable predetermined economic threshold. The problem is that, to similar equity considerations as has been the case for as the monocultural structure of agroecosystems, which crop germplasm. We also question as ªfalse promisesº lacks ecological defense mechanisms, remains unchal- corporate claims that genetic engineering is the wave of lenged, pest problems continually surpass tolerable levels, the future for biological control (Hindmarsh, 1991). We and thus require constant control interventions. Even suggest that this form of biotechnology may exacerbate when natural enemies are featured in IPM programs in pest and other problems of conventional agriculture, and biologically impoverished monocultures, biological con- undermine ecological methods of farming such as biolog- trol has tended to function more as a strategy to ªpatch upº ical control itself. Furthermore, numerous large-scale monocultures. A totally different outcome is observed in releases of genetically engineered organisms risk erod- diversi®ed agroecosystems, where pests are more likely ing genetic diversity and distorting ecological processes to remain below economic thresholds when natural enemy such as natural control in agroecosystems (Rissler and biodiversity is high (Andow, 1991). Mellon, 1996). In fact, such biotechnology may seriously In a way, classical and augmentative biological control threaten the food systems of Third World countries. has had an ªecologically naiveº view of modern agricul- As an alternative, we discuss remarkable advances ture. By assuming and accepting the persistence of large made in developing countries on farmer-led biolog- scale monoculture farms, most of the time biological ical control efforts that constitute ªground-upº farmer-to control specialists seek only to ªbalanceº monocultures farmer approaches to technology transfer and develop- through the addition of natural enemies that may be key ment and that represent potential avenues for reaching to controlling a speci®c pest. This narrow acceptance of production autonomy. We also elaborate on how Cuba's the present structure of agriculture (i.e., as monocultures unique and amazing advances in the artesanal and decen- that are at the very root of most pest problems) as a given tralized development and application of biopesticides are condition, restricts the real possibility of implement- slowly serving to demystify the concept that biotech- ing alternatives that challenge such a structure (Levins, nology can only be high-tech and executed in sophisti- 1973). cated laboratories under private corporate control. It could thus be argued that while often painted as a radical alternative to chemically based control in industrial farming, biological control does not actually Classical biological control and social equity challenge the more fundamental bases of industrial agriculture. Biological control has often been wrongly Classical biological control involves the introduction of promoted as an appropriate technology of low envi- natural enemies from the center of origin of an insect ronmental impact whose diffusion per se could initiate herbivore that has become an exotic pest elsewhere (van broader social change. This technological determinism Driesche and Bellows,