( AGRICULTURE Pest Management Strategies in Crop Protection, Volume I, Office of Technology Assessment, Oct., 1979, from: Superintendent of Documents · U.S. Government Printing Office Washington, DC 20402 In November's RAIN we reviewed Jerry Goldstein's book The Least Is Best Pest Strategy , which introduced and advocates the implementation of a strategy for reducing pest-caused losses in food production by a method called Integrated Pest Management (1PM), integrating organic controls with the minimum use of petro- • chemical pesticides. Now the OTA, urged by Senator Herman Talmadge (Chair of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutri- • tion and Forestry) has produced this study which also advocates the implementation of IPM, but this time with the clout of the government's own advisory arm. The conclusions are the same: yes, IPM can probably reduce the U.S. crop losses to pests by 50 percent, reduce pesticide use by 75 percent and reduce the "total pest control costs by a significant amount." What's really amazing in this study is not only its findings, b4t its recommendations. "Congress faces a choice between i) the status quo for U.S. pest control methods, which although including IPM, continues to rely heavily on chemicals, or 2) developing a strategy to accelerate the present slow evolutionary shift to IPM as a whole systems approach to U.S. crop protection." Moreover, they criticize the government for its "lack of cooperation and coordination between federal and state agencies which impede programs of basic and applied IPM." In fact, the study agrees with those of us who've been saying for years that we "cannot obtain from,county agents or agricultural experiment stations mm;h, if any, information on how to manage pests without pesticid,es." As I read the study I was struck again and <\gain by the value it will have to projects and organizations looking for the numbers and arguments to support their proposals for !PM-related work of their own. And lastly the OTA has evaluated the effect of this "North American crop protection technology" on the rest of the·world. So much of the petro-chemical pesticide technology rampant in the world today came,.after all, with U.S . aid. How we change our practices and our message abroad is a very complicated moral, as well as technical and political, question considered, though of course not resolved, in the book. • This is not.a how-to. It's a political white-paper. The "how to's" are still best found in the work of the Olkowskis in Berkel~y's Farallones Institute . ....:_cc ) BEETLES CATERPILLARS LEPI.DOPTERA ' Roda/e's Color Handbook of Garden Insects, by Anna Carr, 1979, $12.95 from: Rodale Press Emmaus, PA 18049 Rodale's new insect handbook accomplishes several tasks beautifully. The inside covers teach basic insect keying (determining what it is by what it's got). The introduction is a January 1980 RAIN Page 15 .PSYLLIDS lesson in ecology-and the philosophy of eco-system management. "It is hoped that this book will make you aware of the value of all garqen insects and will inform you of their life cycles, their feeding habits, and the rnles they play in the garden's ecology." An_d the entomology lessons contained in "What Is an Insect?" and "How In.sects Live and Grow" are clear; concise and invaluable. Of course the bulk of the book is what everyone's raving about. Color photos of insects in various stages, both beneficial insects and those less so, are a major contribution to insect damage control. Bugs are caught in the stages whe.e they are less likely to be recognized. How many of those.little blue and qrange alligator-like critters did you squish before you, realized they were Lady Beetle larva? The book is a must for organic garden~rs. -CC ( EN·VIRONMENT ) 0 11 st1ore bar . PLUNGERS AND SPI~LERS. 'l'lw plunger dt tire right lws " crest whic/1 rises up and fal_ls ~nto its own trough, sometimes compressing an explosive tulmd of air in its curl. 'l'hc spiller to the left brealcs over a more gradual bcac/1 slope ancl its crest tumbles down its own forward slope. • , The.Beaches Are Moving, Wallace Kaufman and Orrin Pilkey, 1979, $10.95 from: • Anchor Press/Doubleday 245 Park Avenue New York, NY 10017_ The way we' re developing the shorelines of , our country is setting us up for storm disasters larger than this nation has ever known. The futile technological defenses we are building on our shores are themselves a vastly expensive contribution to the hazard and to the destruction of a resource that has tremendous value to both the economy and the spirit. The forces of shoreland evolution are simply and clearly laid out here, along with our past efforts to freeze a dynamic process, the disastrous effects of our efforts, and a primer on how to live with the beaches. A quite .useful resource for anyone in a coastal area threatened by either development or with salvation by the Army Corpse of Engineers. -Tom Bender
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