- "Organic farming, also known as ecological farming or biological farming, is an agricultural system that uses fertilizers of organic origin such as compost manure, green manure, and bone meal and places emphasis on techniques such as crop rotation and companion planting."
Explore alternatives to synthetic pesticides and techniques such as crop rotation, use of beneficial insects, natural pest repellents, and crop diversity.
Biological control: The use of natural predators, parasites, and pathogens as a way of controlling pests.
Cultural control: The use of cultural practices such as crop rotation, intercropping, and soil management to reduce pest infestations.
Natural pesticides: The use of pesticides derived from natural sources such as plants, bacteria, and fungi.
Integrated Pest Management (IPM): A strategy that involves combining several pest management techniques to achieve effective control.
Soil health: The importance of maintaining healthy soil to support plant growth and resistance to pests and diseases.
Companion planting: The planting of crops that have a beneficial effect on neighboring crops, such as repelling pests or improving soil health.
Crop selection and variety choice: The importance of selecting crop varieties that are resistant or less susceptible to pests and diseases.
Trap crops: The use of crops that are attractive to pests, diverting them away from crops that are of higher value.
Physical controls: The use of physical barriers, such as row covers or fences, to prevent pest infestations.
Beneficial insects: The use of insects that prey on or parasitize pests as a form of biological control.
Disease management: The use of cultural practices, natural pesticides, and resistant varieties to prevent and manage plant diseases.
Organic certification: The process of becoming certified to produce organic crops, which involves adhering to strict standards for pest and disease management.
Environmental impact: The importance of organic pest and disease management in minimizing negative environmental impacts, such as pollution and soil degradation.
Pest monitoring: The regular monitoring of crops to detect pest infestations early and to inform pest management decisions.
Cultural control: Cultural control methods include crop rotation, planting of resistant crop varieties, fallowing of the crops, intercropping, maintaining good soil health, and using crop diversity to discourage pests from establishing themselves in the field.
Biological control: Biological control involves using natural predators, parasites, and pathogens to control pests and diseases. It includes the introduction of beneficial insects, such as ladybugs and lacewings, and using microbial products to control plant pathogens.
Physical control: Physical control methods include the use of traps, barriers, and screens to exclude pests from the field. For example, row covers, sticky traps, and insect repellent devices can be used to control insect pests.
Chemical control: This method uses natural, non-toxic substances to control pests and diseases. Examples of natural substances include neem oil, insecticidal soaps, and botanical oils.
Genetic control: Genetic control uses selective breeding or genetic engineering to produce pest-resistant crops.
Integrated Pest Management (IPM): It is a holistic approach that incorporates all the above methods (biological, physical, cultural, chemical and genetic) to manage pests and diseases in an environmentally sustainable and effective way.
Companion planting: It is a practice of planting two or more plants together that have mutually beneficial effects on each other. This method helps in repelling pests and promoting soil health.
Soil management: Adopting organic and sustainable soil management practices such as crop rotation, cover cropping, composting, and avoiding synthetic fertilizers can promote a healthy soil microbiome, natural soil nutrient cycling, and suppress disease and pest pressures.
Natural Repellents: Natural repellents and deterrents can be used to deter pests from entering cultivated areas: Like the use of garlic-pepper spray to deter aphids, or companion planting of marigolds to deter nematodes.
- "It originated early in the 20th century in reaction to rapidly changing farming practices."
- "Certified organic agriculture accounts for 70 million hectares (170 million acres) globally."
- "Over half of that total [70 million hectares] is in Australia."
- "Biological pest control, mixed cropping, and the fostering of insect predators are encouraged."
- "Organic standards are designed to allow the use of naturally-occurring substances while prohibiting or strictly limiting synthetic substances."
- "For instance, naturally-occurring pesticides such as pyrethrin are permitted."
- "Synthetic substances that are allowed include, for example, copper sulfate, elemental sulfur, and ivermectin."
- "Genetically modified organisms, nanomaterials, human sewage sludge, plant growth regulators, hormones, and antibiotic use in livestock husbandry are prohibited."
- "Organic farming advocates claim advantages in sustainability, openness, self-sufficiency, autonomy and independence, health, food security, and food safety."
- "Organic agricultural methods are internationally regulated and legally enforced by transnational organizations and many nations, based in large part on the standards set by the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM)."
- "reaching $63 billion worldwide in 2012."
- "As of 2020, approximately 75,000,000 hectares (190,000,000 acres) worldwide were farmed organically."
- "Organic farming can be beneficial on biodiversity and environmental protection at the local level."
- "Because organic farming has sometimes lower yields compared to intensive farming, additional agricultural land is needed elsewhere in the world, which means that natural and forest land has to be converted into agricultural land."
- "This can cause loss of biodiversity and negative climate effects that sometimes outweigh the local environmental gains achieved."
- "This lower yield does not include dry lands."
- "Food waste of industrial agriculture must be taken into account."
- "Organic agriculture can be defined as 'an integrated farming system that strives for sustainability, the enhancement of soil fertility and biological diversity while, with rare exceptions, prohibiting synthetic pesticides, antibiotics, synthetic fertilizers, genetically modified organisms, and growth hormones'."
- "Organically managed farmland that grew from 2001 to 2011 at a compounding rate of 8.9% per year."