ABSTRACT
Integrated pest management should be oriented to prevent out-breaks by improving the stability of the crop systems rather than coping with pest problems after they occur. Cultural control of insect pests is effected by the manipulation of the environment in such a way as to render it unfavorable to the pest, or alternatively, optimal for natural enemy action. An equilibrium of the crop fauna can be established by organizing vegetational diversity within and around the target crop fields. Monocultures have increased dramatically in the United States both spatially, in that the land devoted to single crops has expanded within a geographic area, and temporally, through the year-to-year production of the same species on the same land. Some pest management programs have been unjustifiably slow in putting ecologically based theory into practice. One of the epidemiological strategies for minimizing losses from plant diseases and nematodes is to increase the species and/or genetic diversity of cropping systems.
