Pests and Pest Management Methods

This chapter, titled Pests and Pest Management Methods and authored by Juan Barrera, deals with agricultural pests. It begins by showing the importance of pests for humanity and later presents terms, concepts, and approaches involved in their management. The terms strategy and tactic or control method are defined, and the concept of pest is proposed from both economic and ecological approaches. Regarding the economic approach, the importance of action thresholds in control decision-making is shown and an example is presented to calculate the economic-injury level and the economic threshold. Next, pests are characterized based on the relationship between their population densities and action thresholds, and control methods are proposed for each of them. Regarding this ecological approach, pests are classified according to the species concept of strategies r and K, and for each of these the most appropriate control methods are presented. Finally, some alternatives to Integrated Pest Management (IPM) – the current paradigm of pest management – that have emerged since the 1990s are described. These alternatives to IPM advocate profitable but environmentally friendly pest management methods that are socially responsible and developed under integral, ecosystemic, and holistic approaches.