Chuck Benbrook in the 2008 Rachel Carson Memorial Lecture: Prevention, not profit, should drive pest management

Multi-nationals have driven pest management down a route of maximum corporate profit. In the 2008 Rachel Carson Memorial Lecture (attached) Chuck Benbrook questions the wisdom of their strategies and advocates more integrated approaches to pest management.The best way to minimize the chance that systemic pest management solutions trigger unforeseen problems is to rely on them sparingly and only when prevention-based biointensive IPM systems are overwhelmed. That is not the path we are now on. Our current path is leading inevitably to the need for more toxins, which will trigger more resistance, kill more beneficial organisms, narrow biodiversity and set the stage for higher costs and new and unanticipated problems. If we travel too far down our current path, we could create conditions in our food system much like those that brought down the financial system. That is an outcome we should all work tirelessly to avoid.