Integrated Pest Management: Definition, Strategies, and Approaches - Research Paper Example

Integrated Pest Management has its focus on the long-term pest management or correcting the damage caused by pests. It is taking actions to preventing the pests from becoming a problem. Growing of healthy plants and crops that can withstand the attack of pests is one of the ways to control the pest invasion. Use of the disease resistant plants or blocking cracks in buildings is another way of pest control. Use of IPM means looking at the different environmental factors that affect pests and the pests’ ability to thrive, rather than eliminating the pests using simple methods that may not work in the long run.

The information on IPM can help one create conditions that will eliminate the pest like exposing the pests to unfavorable conditions where they cannot thrive. Pests are a big menace leading to heavy losses in agriculture while the crops are in the field or during storage of farm produce. Over the years, it has been realized there are no quick fix solutions. This has led to Integrated Pest Management (IPM). IPM has been employed to prevent any further increase in insect population as it is sensitive to the environmental and a useful approach towards pest control.

IPM relies on combining different common ways and practices of pest control. Current and comprehensive information on the life cycle of the pests is what IPM uses together with the interaction of the pests with the environment to come up with different ways of pest management. The aim of IPM is to suppress the number of pests in an area to below the economic injury level. The strategies and approaches that are employed in integrated pest management will be discussed in this article. Integrated Pest Management (IPM) is an approach and a strategy for pest control thus not easy to define as it is not made up of a specific methodology (Sandler 1).

But according to most literature IPM refers to the use of pest population management systems that utilize those available methods of pest control which