Before we can get into attempting to understand whether biological pest control is the response to the pest-control related environmental concerns, it will be proper to give ourselves a little background info on this whole pest control business; for the benefit of those who may be encountering it for the first time.

Now, pests are organisms (typically insects) that are injurious to the interests of the people who refer to them as such. Thus to farmers, the insects that invade and consume their crops (whether in the fields or during storage), will be termed as pests. However, the ‘domestic insects’ that have a tendency to mess up with things in domestic settings (like moths, that may mess up with cloths in storage), are seen as pests by housekeepers. Worth keeping in mind is that although most pests are insects, additionally, there are quite are number that are non-insects: with famous brands rodents (that may screw up with crops in farms of things stored in domestic settings) being seen as pests too, the fact that they are not insects notwithstanding.

Having seen that pests are injurious, it could be natural that individuals who happen to ‘fall victim’ to them would want to remove them. In the meantime, individuals who haven’t yet fallen victim to pests would be keen to avoid such a ‘fate.’ Hosting pests, by the way, could be a serious fate: thousands of hectares of farmland have been known to be wasted by pests in a single day, leading to losses that often come across millions of dollars. It is the steps taken up to avoid pest invasion then, or to resolve pest invasion if it has recently taken place, that are known as constituting pest control.

Now pest control takes various forms, based on the pests one is wanting to get rid of (or to prevent the invasion of). Even though bigger pests like rodents may be controlled through mechanical means like trapping, for an extended period of time, it really is chemical control which has worked for almost all pests, which tend to be insects as previous mentioned. The chemicals found in this endeavor are what exactly are termed as pesticides. Even though pesticides are usually very effective in pest-control, the downside in their mind tends to come up when we consider the fact that they are usually extremely environmentally unfriendly. Worth remember, at this point, may be the proven fact that the chemicals known as pesticides are usually very potent ones. So that it often happens that traces of these remain where they were used, even after the pests have died. Those traces are eventually washed right down to the water bodies where they wreck great havoc to the (non pest) plants and animals resident in the water bodies.

It is concern about this environmental impact of chemical pest-control that resulted in questions concerning whether a far more environmentally friend method for controlling pests couldn’t be developed. The outcome was the exploration of alternatives just like the biological pest control, which we have been trying to see whether it is really the answer to concerns raised about (chemical- based) pest control.

In biological pest-control, it is other organisms that are known to be predators to the people viewed as pest that are unleashed upon the said pests; eating them up and for that reason resolving the pest problem. Thus if the troublesome pests are aphids, another organisms that are recognized to prey on aphids are introduced in to the field where the problem is, to feed on the aphids, rather than spraying an environmentally unfriendly chemical.

The issue with biological pest-control, though, is that it tends to be of questionable efficiency. While chemical pest control is commonly thorough, leaving no pests and even traces of them, in biological pest control, that can’t quite be assured. Implementing biological pest control on a big scale basis (for instance on a thousand hectare plantation) may also end up being a herculean task. Ultimately, it really is considerations like these that make us keep on thinking about more environmentally friendly pest control approaches. This is because biological pest control, while definitely as an approach that addresses environmentally friendly concerns raised about chemical pest control, it doesn’t seem to be efficient (or scalable) enough, generally in most people people’s view.