Globally, agriculture is facing enormous pressure to produce more food for growing population while it is increasingly getting affected by shrinking cultivable land area, water availability and climate change. With impressive economic growth, homogeneity of diets across countries has increased in the last 50 years and is pushing more and more countries become heavily reliant on a shorter list of major crops - wheat, maize and soybean as global population grows and meat consumption is steadily on the rise. Any shortfall in one crop in a major country creates seismic ripple effects in the global trade and push millions deep into hunger and poverty mainly in Asia and Africa. Further, while productivity needs significant improvement, the crop protection chemicals globally play a vital role in protecting crops from pests and diseases on the field and in storage, assuring production of adequate quantities of safe and quality food and contribute immensely to food security.

Importantly, this is avoidable to a great extent by using appropriate control methods which can broadly be classified as Integrated Pest Management (IPM). It includes judicious and responsible use of crop protection chemicals as one of the several tools to improve crop yield and food quality; minimize risks to environment and health and manage pesticide residues in the final produce.