ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts of the concepts covered in the preceding chapters of this book. The book proposes a variety of regulatory and incentive-based approaches to reduce chemical pesticide use. The Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) analogue of the technology-based standard, therefore, is an alternative reduced-risk method of pest control. Such an alternative can be either a lower-risk chemical pesticide, or other non-chemical methods of pest control, such as biological control or cultural control. Another change to either FIFRA or Environmental Protection Agency (EPAs) implementation of the statute would be for EPA to require resistance management plans to be developed and adopted for all large-scale agricultural pesticide registrations. Another component of the needed multifaceted approach is the provision of economic incentives in the form of subsidies or ecosystem services payments to producers who adopt organic, Ecologically Based Pest Management (EBPM), or other ecologically based pest management systems.
