Must Commerce, Ecology and Agriculture Always Be At Odds With Each Other?

Role of insect ecology in agriculture?

• please answer pointwise and in brief

• Answer:

  There is no short answer. The role of insects in agriculture is both good and bad. Because, like all life on earth is an interlocking puzzle of niches filled, all that is today, all of the evolved species of all the Kingdoms owe their existence to all the others around them. With respect to agriculture there are pests and there are the "beneficials". Because agriculture is a system based mostly on the cropping of a small number of individual crops to a farm (most frequently a monoculture), nature must view this as an anomaly, an overpopulation of a species of plant (in this case but not necessarily plants but anything grown). With this frequently is also a plant that is not in the health or state that nature intended (imbalance of fertilizer, overworked soil structure or over bred varieties). Nature says that with this glut of food that would have been naturally "killed and eaten" for weakness inherent, caused to be by an imperfect agricultural system (survival of the fittest makes a stronger genetic and adapted individual to carry on) the other creatures that would rely on this for food, the small numbers of an insect species living off some scattered members of a plant species, now have a huge diet of imperfect plants to dine on. No matter how good a farmer one is there will never be a perfect plant/ crop. The insect population will rise in seeking a balance in the environment, not of their choosing but by the power of nature, her niches available, and natural selection. Bird populations, or bats, or any insectivores will increase in populations, and then the carnivores will increase, and also the diseases of insects, and animals. In short, the role of the insect ecology is to fill a niche and in turn, support the food pyramid, or food chain, and keep the harmonious balance that is life on the planet. With respect to agriculture, that is a human made imbalance and nature will not tolerate it. In the end, the insect ecology forces us to learn to mimic nature in order to have agriculture to support our species and civilization. We must have insects and we need to learn to work with them.