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Agroecological Crop Protection in Organic Farming: Relevance and Limits

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Organic Farming, Prototype for Sustainable Agricultures

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Abstract

Plant protection is one of the major issues in organic farming. Organic crop protection (OCP) strategies often rely on a limited number of methods that provide only partial control of pests and that induce lower yields and economic performances. As a result, farmers hesitate to adopt these strategies and doubts are cast on the ability of organic agriculture to feed the world. This chapter questions how agroecological concepts may contribute to OCP, while taking the different alternative schemes already developed to manage, integrate and design crop protection strategies into account. As demonstrated by a bibliographic analysis, Integrated pest management (IPM) remains the leading paradigm in crop protection. It also provides its foundational basis, giving priority to bioecological processes and alternative techniques to reduce pesticide use. Beyond IPM, agroecology is characterised by a holistic approach and the importance given to the design of a “healthy” agroecosystem. In practice, all these concepts are subject to various interpretations, and organic farming includes a variety of practices, ranging from intensive input-substitution to a comprehensive integrated approach. This paper provides key elements for crop protection in OF on the basis of the adaptation of the agroecological crop protection approach. Based on a successful case study of fruit fly management in OF in Reunion Island (France), we highlight three major pillars to design pest management strategies: sanitation, habitat manipulation and conservation biological control. Finally, in the field of crop protection, this paper shows that organic farming can be both a prototype for designing innovations and a source of practices to be extended to other types of agroecosystems.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank all of the readers who helped us to improve the quality of this paper and who contributed to the definition of each of the concepts herein. We are also grateful to Guillaume Ollivier for sharing his knowledge about bibliometry with us and his invaluable help in these discussions.

The case study relies on a vast effort provided by many people who unfortunately cannot all be mentioned here, although we acknowledge each and every one of them. We particularly thank Marie-Ludders Moutoussamy, Cédric Ajaguin Soleyen, Toulassi Atiama-Nurbel and Pascal Rousse for technical assistance in conducting experiments. We also acknowledge Dow AgroSciences (France) for permission to conduct trials on Synéïs-appât. Gamour was operated by a fruitful collaboration between ASP, DAAF, the Chamber of Agriculture of Reunion Island, CIRAD, Farre Reunion, FDGDON, GAB, Université de La Réunion, Takamaka Industries, SCA Terres Bourbon and Vivéa Réunion. Funding for this research was provided by Odeadom (Office de Développement de l’Economie Agricole des Départements d’Outre-mer), the European Commission, the Regional Council of Reunion Island, the General Council of Reunion Island, CIRAD and the French Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Fishing through a CAS-DAR grant.

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  1. CIRAD, UMR PVBMT, 3P, 7 chemin de l’IRAT, 97410, Saint-Pierre, La Réunion, France

    Jean-Philippe Deguine

  2. INRA, UR0767 Écodéveloppement, 228 route de l’Aérodrome, Domaine Saint Paul, Site Agroparc, CS 40509, 84914, Avignon Cedex 09, France

    Servane Penvern

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  1. Jean-Philippe Deguine
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Correspondence to Jean-Philippe Deguine .

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  1. Unité Ecodéveloppement, INRA, Avignon Cedex 09, France

    Stéphane Bellon

  2. Unité Ecodéveloppement, INRA, Avignon Cedex 09, France

    Servane Penvern

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Deguine, JP., Penvern, S. (2014). Agroecological Crop Protection in Organic Farming: Relevance and Limits. In: Bellon, S., Penvern, S. (eds) Organic Farming, Prototype for Sustainable Agricultures. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7927-3_6

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