World of Philosophy

Author(s): Christopher Key Chapple, Intaj Malek, Dilip Charan, Sunanda Shastri, Prashant Dave
Publisher: Shanti Prakashan

Page 413

BIOPESTICIDES FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
- Dr. Kale A. P.
Sustainable development involves successful management of resources that can satisfy the changing human needs while maintaining or enhancing the quality of the environment and conserving the natural resources. With the ever growing world population, to fulfill the food, fiber and feed requirement the conventional agriculture practices are falling short. The price of inputs is increasing continuously. The use of more and more chemicals to prevent the damages to crop by pests, in order to increase the crop yield is not producing results. In fact it is generating pesticide resistant insects, which is leading the farmer to apply more potent toxic substances on their crops, thus leading to environmental contamination, unpredicted effects on human health, wildlife and non target organisms in the ecosystem.
The use of biopesticides is a major step towards sustainable development. Biopesticides, originate from the living system and can either repel, inhibit or destroy the pest that would cause economic loss. They are an excellent alternative to toxic substances and a means to reduce the hazardous effects on human health and environment.
The goal of all the sciences and all the philosophies is to provide a healthy environment and allow sustainable development. The paper endeavors to highlight the philosophy behind biopesticides and sustainable development.
The twentieth century has been an unprecedented century of population growth, economic development and environmental change. Since 1900 to 2000 world population grew from 1.6 to 6.1 billion (United Nations, 2001). Increase in food production, at present fall short of demand to feed the human population. More than 800 million people do not have adequate food and 1.3. billion live on less than $1 per day (Strange and Scott, 2005).
The global area under crop production is approximately 1.5 billion hectares. However, far from being expanded, the area under cultivation is reducing in developing countries. In addition to the diminishing land, diseases, insects and weeds together annually interfere with the production of, or destroy between 31 and 42% of all crops produced worldwide. It has been estimated that of the 36.5 % average of total losses, 14.1 % are caused by disease, 10.2% by insects and 12.2% by weeds. The total annual crop loss from plant diseases is about $ 220 billion (Agrios, 2005).
Since the beginning of human civilization, there has been going on a tug of war between the crop pests and diseases on one side and the efforts and techniques farmers have been devising to control them for protecting
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