ABSTRACT
The original reason for the development and use of pesticide chemicals was to reduce crop losses to insects, fungi, and weeds, and so ensure better yields. Pesticides are also employed in the protection of non-food crops, such as cotton. Continued population growth looks likely to place ever greater demands on the world's food and fibre supplies and one solution to this is to strive to increase crop yields. Human poisoning, environmental degradation, and food contamination have all been side-effects of the production, distribution and use of pesticides on food crops in the latter part of this century. The work of International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC), and more importantly Groupement International des Associations de Fabricants de Produits Agrochimiques (GIFAP)/Global Crop Protection Federation (GCPF), within the issue of increasing crop yields by pesticides can be understood as amounting to an epistemic community which serves to counter the knowledge based systems promoting a retreat from pesticide usage.
