Agriculture involves crop husbandry, animal husbandry, forestry and fisheries. Your income will go up only if you look at the system, and not from one crop alone.
Controlling mosquitos is tough. It's not quick; it's not easy. It requires work day in and day out to track where mosquitos are and to apply safely the appropriate mosquito control methods.
Mosquito control in the United States is very much a local and state activity. Some states have excellent programs, other states not so much. It's one of the reasons it's so urgent to identify and spread best practices to try and track and reduce mosquito populations.
Agricultural science is largely the contest between emerging pests and the emerging methods of their control.
We have to devise ways to lower the cost of production and reduce the risks involved in agriculture such as pests, pathogens, and weeds.
I'm sure a majority of farmers do their best to follow safe practices, to read carefully chemical labels, to follow the law, and to try and ensure that they are making both safe and profitable decisions for their business.
Natural farming is just farming, nothing more. You don't have to be a spiritually oriented person to practice my methods.
The only sensible approach to disease and insect control, I think, is to grow sturdy crops in a healthy environment.
The final principle of natural farming is NO PESTICIDES. Nature is in perfect balance when left alone.
Our agricultural colleges continue to graduate specialists who become vocational agricultural teachers in the schools, and county agents, who go forth to extol the virtues of poison insecticides, herbicides, and commercial fertilizers.
Organic farming and other earlier methods can be effective, provided they can help us improve soil health and plant health. Plant pesticides like neem and tobacco need to be promoted.
Weeds do become resistant to herbicides, and it needs to be managed with multiple herbicides.
If you must get rid of a roach, use mechanical control.
Agricultural science is largely a race between the emergence of new pests and the emergence of new techniques for their control.
Almost all the knowledge required to produce more food than eroding soil is available today - we just need to use that knowledge within a holistic paradigm - managing agriculture holistically, forming the policies that undergird it holistically.
There is also a marked global trend towards sustainable agriculture, building on traditional methods which use fewer chemical inputs, carefully manage soil and water resources, and work hand-in-hand with nature.
It's important to concede that modern pesticides have helped to make farming more productive and to increase yields.
All money for agricultural extension, land grant universities has been toward developing industrial food. Lots of money has been invested toward maximizing yield. If you took even a small amount of that money and put it toward organic research, I don't have any doubts you could match those yields.
I'm very much for making everything safe. The more natural the means we use to raise our vegetables and get rid of bugs, the better.
