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Insecticides in the 20th Century Environment

1960; Oxford University Press; Volume: 10; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/1292826

2326-1331

G. C. Decker,

Insect behavior and control techniques

WHEN THE FIRST white men came to North America, they found a race of rather primitive men living in reasonable harmony with a relatively stable environment. Under those conditions, this continent supported a population of about one million persons and provided in excess of 2000 acres per capita. Then, as now, literally dozens of insects attacked every crop that grew and neither man nor beast escaped their ravages. In the years that followed, with agriculture on a subsistence basis and a seemingly endless supply of land available, there was plenty for all, and farmers raised only feeble objections to share cropping with the insects. Later, as urban populations increased, each farmer was called upon to meet the food and fiber requirements of an ever-increasing number of individuals and to do so on an ever-decreasing number of acres per capita. This trend continued until at present we have only a little over ten acres per person, seven of which are classified as farm land but only two of which are devoted to crop production. The early American farmers had little choice but to rely upon nature to control their insect enemies. Then, as losses mounted and the standards of perfection demanded by an increasingly more discriminating consuming public rose, farmers began to clamor for governmental aid and scientific guidance to solve their insect control problems. The early state and federal entomologists were essentially naturalists, and they preached a gospel of biological and cultural insect control methods. For years such measures dominated all entomological endeavor, but finally when natural controls proved wholly inadequate, entomologists reluctantly turned to chemicals, and thus we entered an age of chemical insect control.