Pesticide use and world food production: Risks and benefits

For most of the next century, we will need to produce enough food for nine billion people instead of the six billion we are trying to feed today. If we try to improve the average diet as well, we may need to double annual world food production for most years of the next century. There is not much more land that can be devoted to agriculture without having an enormous environmental impact on forested or wilderness areas. Furthermore, a higher proportion of agricultural land may be used industrially to produce fuel or fibre instead of food. Thus, we may need to grow twice as much food on even less land than we are using today. We are currently using $35 billion worth of pesticides each year in agriculture, world wide. What will the benefits and risks be if this level of pesticide use is continued or increased? What will they be if pesticide use is discontinued? Several years ago, farmers in highly developed, industrialized countries could expect a three or four fold return on money spent on pesticides. Is this still true? Can we meet world food demands if producers stop using pesticides because of reduced economic benefits? Can better IPM preserve the economic benefits of pesticide use? Although crop losses are currently greatest in less industrialized countries, can we meet the educational and training requirements to safely increase pesticide use in these areas? These are just some of the questions facing scientists and pest management experts as agriculture faces its greatest challenge in history between now and the year 2100.