Evidence that organic farming promotes pest control

Lucile Muneret, Matthew Mitchell, Verena Seufert, Stéphanie Aviron, El Aziz Djoudi, Julien Pétillon, Manuel Plantegenest, Denis Thiéry and Adrien Rusch ()
Additional contact information
Lucile Muneret: INRA, UMR 1065 Santé et Agroécologie du Vignoble, ISVV, Université de Bordeaux, Bordeaux Sciences Agro
Matthew Mitchell: University of British Columbia
Verena Seufert: Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT)
Stéphanie Aviron: INRA, UMR BAGAP, INRA-ESA-Agrocampus Ouest
El Aziz Djoudi: Université de Rennes 1, UMR Ecobio, Campus de Beaulieu
Julien Pétillon: Université de Rennes 1, UMR Ecobio, Campus de Beaulieu
Manuel Plantegenest: INRA, UMR IGEPP, Agrocampus Ouest, Université de Rennes 1, Université Bretagne-Loire
Denis Thiéry: INRA, UMR 1065 Santé et Agroécologie du Vignoble, ISVV, Université de Bordeaux, Bordeaux Sciences Agro
Adrien Rusch: INRA, UMR 1065 Santé et Agroécologie du Vignoble, ISVV, Université de Bordeaux, Bordeaux Sciences Agro

Nature Sustainability, 2018, vol. 1, issue 7, 361-368

Abstract: Abstract Ecological intensification of agro-ecosystems, based on the optimization of ecological functions such as biological pest control, to replace agrochemical inputs is a promising route to reduce the ecological footprint of agriculture while maintaining commodity production. However, the performance of organic farming, often considered as a prototype of ecological intensification, in terms of pest control remains largely unknown. Here, using two distinct meta-analyses, we demonstrate that, compared to conventional cropping systems, (i) organic farming promotes overall biological pest control potential, (ii) organic farming has higher levels of overall pest infestations but (iii) that this effect strongly depends on the pest type. Our study shows that there are lower levels of pathogen infestation, similar levels of animal pest infestation and much higher levels of weed infestation in organic than in conventional systems. This study provides evidence that organic farming can enhance pest control and suggests that organic farming offers a way to reduce the use of synthetic pesticide for the management of animal pests and pathogens without increasing their levels of infestation.

Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-018-0102-4 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natsus:v:1:y:2018:i:7:d:10.1038_s41893-018-0102-4

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/natsustain/

DOI: 10.1038/s41893-018-0102-4

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Sustainability is currently edited by Monica Contestabile

More articles in Nature Sustainability from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().