A New Era for Pest Monitoring & Agricultural Pest Management
September 2024 — If you’ve been keeping tabs on the latest commercial agricultural trends, you’re probably aware that the blend of science, technology, and sustainability is driving the future of agricultural pest management. At times, it may feel overwhelming to try and keep up with how quickly best practices and generally accepted methods are changing when it comes to monitoring pests in your fields and pesticide application. Instead of trying to make sense of the litany of suggestions, advisories, hearsay, and rumors that are floating around the web, we decided to speak directly with an expert to get insight surrounding the current state and future of pesticides, commercial insect management, and the innovations that are driving these changes. We spoke with award-winning entomologist and licensed Pest Control Advisor (PCA), Dr. Tracy Ellis, to gain expert insight into the transformative era that commercial agricultural pest management has entered. Dr. Ellis’ expert insect commentary is frequently used in publications such as Homes & Gardens, CNN, Washington Post, Martha Stewart, TODAY, USA Today, and many other outlets.
FarmSense’s Fireside Chat With an Entomologist
Okay, let’s be realistic — we’re in the era of remote work…there was not an actual fireside chat. Having said that, we think that you’ll find our interview with Dr. Ellis to be eye-opening regardless if you’re in the commercial agriculture industry or not. The truth of the matter is that insects impact each and every one of us. That’s one of the reasons that we feel it is vital to not only understand, but to also embrace the advances being made in the world of pesticide development, use, and agricultural pest management — in addition to the changes being made in commercial agriculture as a whole.
FarmSense: Thanks for taking the time to chat with us, Dr. Ellis. To give our readers some background on your contributions to the entomological field, you have worked for the USDA and other government agencies surrounding insect quarantine enforcement and eradication programs. You also have extensive experience working with farmers, stakeholders, and communities surrounding pest detection, monitoring, regulation, and suppression tactics. It is safe to say that your research and work in the field has significantly impacted biopesticide discovery, innovation, and commercialization. Given that you’ve dedicated your entire career to helping the world better understand insects, we want to begin by asking what you feel has been the biggest shift in commercial pesticides during your time in the industry?
Tracy Ellis: Transgenic crops have been the greatest advancement. The most impactful development during my career has been the use of gene editing and transformation to provide plant protection against pests. While skeptics are highly critical of this technology, I saw firsthand how the elimination of insecticide sprays by use of transgenes was an amazing step forward for the crop ecosystem; by use of corn resistant to European corn borer for example, all the predators and parasites such as Orius and ladybugs were allowed to thrive. These developments happened early in my career during the 1990’s and 2000’s. I am disappointed that we haven’t seen more applications in plant physiological knowledge to make plant-protective transgenes across many crops.
FarmSense: So, do you think that recent advancements in pest monitoring technology will ultimately make pesticides a thing of the past?
TE: Monitoring technology alerts you to changes in the ecosystem. Even if you had a sustainable system where the pests are under biological or other types of control, a flare up of primary or secondary pests is always possible. The earlier a flare-up is detected, the sooner the causal factor may be identified and actions taken. I look at monitoring as being independent from insecticides. Monitoring can include beneficial insects too, where you may have a threshold population you need to have for a pest to stay under biological control, and be alerted when you may need to artificially supplement with inundative releases of the biological control agent. Monitoring the key factors whether pest or beneficial insect will always be important to growing crops.
FarmSense: One of the frequently touted benefits of real-time insect pest monitoring is that it can help slow the development of pesticide resistance. Do you also subscribe to this notion and if so, can you explain how a piece of technology can impact an evolutionary change?
TE: Monitoring provides the farm manager with information to make judicious usage of insecticides. FarmSense’s upgraded real-time monitoring technology will make this data even more useful to the farm manager to make timely and effective use of insecticides. Lowering the number of applications of an insecticide in conjunction with rotation of active ingredients is all part of pesticide resistance management. Effective insecticide applications applied at the appropriate time at the right stage for maximum impact are reliant on pest field observations including automated monitoring.
FarmSense: Interesting. That is a great segue into our next question about pesticide regulation. Currently, it feels as though pesticide regulation is largely determined at the state level, which means some states have minimal regulations which can lead to the use of incorrect pesticides as well as an overabundance of pesticides being used. On the other hand, some states like California have created a Department of Pesticide Regulation to develop guidelines and plans towards non-pesticidal sustainable agricultural pest management practices. Being that you’re a licensed Pest Control Advisor in California, do you feel that there would be a benefit in a department of pesticide regulation at the federal level?
TE: The US already has strong oversight at the federal level. The EPA, in conjunction with USDA and industry, has done a smart job of re-evaluating all the pesticides registered for use starting with the Pesticide Registration Improvement Act of 2003, an amendment to the original 1947 FIFRA Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act. This resulted in pesticides with a high residual in water or in sediment, those that are risky to workers, and those that are otherwise harmful being removed or further restricted to encourage use of chemicals that are degraded and detoxified more easily. California has added shortened timelines for a transition to softer chemistries and has taken the opportunity to encourage growers to reduce and change over. I have confidence that the insecticide label has instructions to use the material effectively and safely; there is a disconnect at times for people to abide by provisions of insecticide labels, particularly in homeowner use which is receiving scrutiny as well but at times also in professional use. Also, one of the greatest challenges is how to use the softer chemistries effectively, to achieve sufficient control of the pest without crop loss and breaking the bank; there is much more application precision required when using insecticides with a short residual and lower activity, and with impeccable timing, meaning that scouting and monitoring by the Pest Control Advisor (PCA) becomes even more critical.
FarmSense: As part of California’s Department of Pesticide Regulation, they have implemented a 20+ year roadmap, which highlights goals around not only pesticide use, but the evolution of integrated pest management (IPM) into what has been coined, sustainable pest management (SPM). Do you believe this roadmap is an appropriate approach to pesticide use?
TE: I admire the CA Department of Pesticide Regulation for trying to add vitality to an old idea of integrated pest management and reframe it as sustainable pest management. It’s important to stabilize lowered pest populations with biological control and reduce reliance on chemicals whenever possible. However, agricultural systems can fluctuate quite a bit due to changes in acreages, cropping cycles, and even to newly introduced pests. Sustained biological control seems to work well in more permanent infrastructure settings. Research into these intricacies is expensive and time consuming; by the time deliverables are obtained, the factors have often changed again. One promising area is revisiting the idea of alternate food and shelter harborages for pollinators, which will likely also benefit biological controls. This can be tricky as well because any factor introduced may also create additional issues such as the good intentions of the pollinator harborage paving the way for an introduction of a pathogen to the crop. Agricultural management is anything but simple.
FarmSense: What about the transition of integrated pest management (IPM) into sustainable pest management (SPM)? What are the primary changes between IPM and SPM?
TE: The way I interpreted the roadmap, the emphasis on “sustainable” is to infuse the “self-sustaining” aspect of integrated pest management which is part of the original concept of IPM, but has been de-emphasized in recent years. The idea of both is to build a system that is not reliant on taking drastic action to get an insect problem under control where that action may destabilize other functioning factors. The sustainability goal, as I interpret it, is that you want to know when your pests are moving towards the economic threshold level and take subtle corrective actions that have minimal impact on other conditions you are trying to achieve.
FarmSense: Shifting gears a bit, let’s talk about urban pest management. We’re not necessarily talking about the annoying gnat that keeps buzzing around your face, but more along the lines of insects that can serve as disease vectors, like mosquitoes. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the mosquito is considered the world’s deadliest animal. You’ve served as an entomologist for government agencies in the past, so we’re curious as to your thoughts on how insect monitoring technology could be most effectively applied in urban settings?
TE: The trick to using FarmSense’s technology is to have the insect fly through the sensor. This can be done with mosquitoes when you have a CO2 attractant because the females think there is a blood meal nearby. Drs. Shailendra Singh and Eamonn Keogh of FarmSense have already shown the sensor to be able to distinguish between several species and even males from female mosquitoes! FarmSense hopes to apply the sensor technology to be part of the public health effort against mosquito-borne diseases in the next few years.
FarmSense: Comparing insect monitoring tech being used in commercial agricultural pest management and urban settings, do you feel that one area is more important than the other in terms of integrating real-time pest monitoring tech?
TE: Entomologists have their specialties, and while I value the stability of the food supply as being the goal of utmost importance, I respectfully regard the fight against human and livestock pests and disease as being an equally important endeavor. FarmSense monitoring technology, in its current state, requires the insect to fly through the sensor — hence why it’s called “FlightSensor.” The value of automated pest monitoring is apparent in both settings where information on pest populations is valued for important action-oriented decisions.
FarmSense: Jumping now to the topic of biopesticides — we’ve written about the realistic expectations of biopesticides in the past and would like your take. Do you believe that biopesticides will ever replace synthetic pesticides?
TE: I believe most of the reason the biopesticide term was developed was for regulatory fast-tracking reasons, those with natural origin that have fast degradation, and that are safer for humans and the environment. As time goes on, it’s sort of an artificial designation because both biopesticides and synthetic insecticides are mostly based on chemicals found in nature, whether it be a protein produced by a bacteria or a secondary plant compound. Many of the biopesticides are not target specific, i.e. broad spectrum, which is one of the major criticisms against synthetics, even though they are fast tracked. The future holds many possibilities including that synthetics have all the safety and environmental features of biopesticides yet retain insecticidal activity, and there will be a place for them. There should probably be a return to judging all prospective insecticides for registration using uniform criteria in one pipeline, as well as making the overall registration process more efficient for all types.
FarmSense: Let’s pretend you’re a commercial farmer running a well-oiled operation. What are the three things at the top of your mind when asked the question, “how are you future-proofing your farm”?
TE: Solidify all the basics such as good soil, water, electricity, and fuel — but add internet connectivity and stay current on the developing technology available. The farm of the future will need a form of wireless connectivity and a means of integrating digital information to take advantage of technological advances whether it’s the FlightSensor, keeping track of harvest weights in real time, or a robot receiving instruction to pack an order. The farm of the future will have machines talking to each other; when information is gathered from one, it will start initiating activation of another. The human will be orchestrating all these activities so growers and farmers need to stay tech savvy.
FarmSense: Dr. Ellis, thank you again for taking the time to share this valuable insight. Are there any thoughts you would like to leave our readers with?
TE: The weather is the safest topic to discuss with someone you don’t know. But if you want to get a person animated, ask about their decision-making process when they order a meal at a restaurant or what criteria they use to purchase their food in the grocery store. It’s almost always true that conventionally grown food is viewed as “bad” and organically as “good”. The singlemost misperception is that “USDA Certified Organic” means that insecticide sprays are not used to control pests in growing that food. The truth is that USDA Certified Organic products also use insecticides when necessary, but that the ingredients are chosen from a list of pre-approved ones. Many farmers choose to remain conventional because there are fewer active-ingredient options to use in rotation and the options offered tend to be more expensive.
The Takeaway
Agricultural pest management is evolving rapidly, driven by advancements in technology and sustainability initiatives. Our conversation with Dr. Tracy Ellis highlights the importance of integrating real-time monitoring systems like FarmSense’s FlightSensor into both commercial agriculture and urban pest control efforts. While synthetic pesticides remain a key tool, innovations such as transgenic crops, biopesticides, and sustainable pest management practices offer promising alternatives.
As we move toward a more sustainable future, adopting a proactive, tech-driven approach to agricultural pest management, monitoring, and control will be essential to maintaining healthy ecosystems and ensuring a secure food supply.