Since the earliest origins of agriculture, farmers and cultivated plants (or crops) have rightly been credited with securing copious food supplies and enabling the rise of complex societies. From Mesopotamia over the High Andes to the Yellow River Basin, crop domestication and farmers’ immense creativity enabled a lasting shift away from hunter-gatherer lifestyles and freed up large sections of the workforce for myriad other activities. Yet, farmers and an ever shrinking set of plants are clearly not the sole actors in this millennia-old farming revolution. Countless other animals, microbes and non-cultivated herbs, shrubs and trees work ‘behind the scenes’ to support life as we know it, yet have historically been overlooked. Earthworms for example are responsible for 7-10% of the world’s grain harvests, animal pollinators secure one third of global food supplies while the action of invertebrate predators raises crop yields by a quarter. Now that their numbers are dwindling due to (chemical) farm intensification, it is high time to recognize and harness their pivotal role in agri-food production. There are various ways to blow new life into agriculture and the below emerging trends carry ample promise.  

Building agroecological resilience from the bottom up

Soils are more than inert growing media or ‘dirt’, but provide the very basis of (crop) life. Acting as critical reservoirs of beneficial micro- and macro-organisms, healthy soils uphold multiple ecosystem services and are a foundation stone of One Health. Soils don’t only lend taste to wine and cheese or offer traction to machinery, but the soil microbiome is intimately and intricately intertwined with that of plant and animals – including humans. Soils’ microbial communities are more than the ‘sum of its parts’, as individual biota actively join hands (if not hyphae and flagella) to bolster plant growth and ensure (climate) resilience. Yet, with 33% of global soils degraded, the basis of our food system is crumbling. Over 80% of Europe’s farmland is currently tainted with chemical pesticides; intensive tillage and chemical fertilizers add on to these stressors to make many farmland soils virtually ‘devoid of life’ and with inadequate adaptive capacity. System-level interventions such as integrated soil fertility management - involving legume integration and organic matter addition - rebuild this resource base and spawn cascading social-environmental benefits. Below our feet is where regenerative agriculture truly initiates.

A bonanza of opportunities presents itself to tactically integrate biodiversity-based and agroecological practices over space and time. The integration of preventative, ecologically-sound measures can suppress pests, diseases and weeds with minimal – if any – need for chemical pesticide and in full compliance with core principles of IPM (as per Wyckhuys et al., 2022). 

Integrating pest and pollinator management

Three quarters of the leading food crops rely on animal pollination, and such goes far beyond the action of the Apis mellifera honeybee ‘workhorse’. In fact, nearly 200,000 bee, fly, butterfly, ant, and beetle species along with various vertebrates (like birds, mammals such as bats, lizards and even frogs) act as pollinators of (wild, cultivated) plants and most are negatively affected by conventional farming practice. Pesticide use and agriculture-driven habitat loss cause pollinator decline, carrying severe implications for human health. Current pollination deficits translate into 3–5% foregone fruit, vegetable and nut production and roughly half a million excess human deaths per year globally – primarily in low-income countries. To effectively conserve (bee, non-bee) pollinators, one needs tailored landscape-level management plans and crop protection strategies that actively shield them. Indeed, pollinators (and myriad other beneficial biota) are critically disregarded in IPM i.e., FAO’s crop protection compass since 1968. Approaches such as Agroecological Crop Protection (ACP; the very foundation of IPM) and Integrated Pest and Pollinator Management (IPPM) could bring relief. Biological control is a core feature of both conceptual frameworks, more so as many pollinators (e.g., hoverflies) assume a dual role as predators or even vector beneficial microorganisms from one plant to another – acting as the world’s truest ‘flying doctors’. By consciously prioritizing biological control and biopesticides in diversified landscape matrices, one can resolve pest issues in a nature-friendly manner and protect pollinators from harm. A true win-win, waiting to be tapped.

Full throttle towards Plant Health

Pesticide-intensive crop protection sustains food production in the face of pest attack but is also a source of many ills. Its One Health impacts – which have been documented with ever-greater resolution since the 1960s - are continually aggravating. Over the past 10 years, pesticide usage intensity grew by 20% worldwide and a staggering 153% in low-income countries. Further, oral toxicity of insecticides in US agriculture has increased 48-fold since the early 1990s. IPM truly has lost its way and today’s pesticide-related issues are tied to ineffective policies, misaligned incentives and prevailing reductionistic approaches. Farmers, scientists and policy makers tend to view crop protection in isolation from the farming system, systematically prioritizing curative action and single-factor ‘techno-fixes’ within individual fields over integrative, preventative measures at farm or landscape scales (Fig. 1). For decades, farmers have combated pests with unyielding zeal, a vast armory of chemical tools and near-total disregard of their most loyal microscopic or six-legged allies. Now is the time to turn the page. With today’s farmland ‘battle-scared’ and deprived of its natural safeguards, a time for nurturing and restoring has come.

FAO does not come unprepared. Its new Plant Health program aims to unleash biotic interactions (or multi-trophic defenses) through agroecological designs and biodiversity-based tactics such as biological control. A new generation of Plant Health officers is stepping to the fore: bridge-builders, knitters of cooperation arrangements and eagle-eyed systems thinkers. Plant Health pursues a wholesale redesign of production ecosystems, guided by the 10 elements of agroecology. Its outcomes are no longer solely measured in currencies such as % pest reduction or reconstituted crop yield, but through multi-dimensional metrics that capture actual farm profit, resource use efficiencies and the health of animals, plants and the environment. By putting biological control and agroecology front-and-center, as per IPM’s definition, farmland birds and bees may once again become key protagonists of life’s story. And, not less importantly, farmers will come to thrive in a new role of stewards of our Planet. 

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Authored by Kris A.G. Wyckhuys. Kris is a consultant with FAO’s Global Action on Fall Armyworm, its Pest and Pesticide Management Unit (NSPCD), the Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific (RAP) and the Vietnam country office. He aims to promote biological control and agroecology under an IPM umbrella, and is closely involved in various R4D projects in both Asia and the Americas.