Dr Gerhard H Verdoorn,
CropLife South Africa
N
o farm anywhere in the world is
paradise. Paradise ended that day
when Adam and Eve were banished
from the Garden of Eden and had
to start fending for themselves. That is also the
event that awakened the agronomic spirit in
humankind and set us onto a pathway that
would develop into one of the most formidable activities in the world namely food and fibre production. In the year 2016 one stands in
awe of what commercial farmers produce under huge strain and difficulty in a world where
a large percentage of people criticise farmers,
yet grow fat on the food stocks they produce.
One of the greatest challenges that all farmers
face is that of pests, diseases, parasites, weeds
and predators. All of these are in direct competition with farmers and if left unmanaged
can devastate agricultural production to the
point where food and fibre stocks will plummet to nothingness. Very few ever take the
Cave painting of Aurochs, horses, and
deer at Lascaux France
By Prof saxx - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/
index.php?curid=2846254
time to sit down and unravel the dilemma of
competitive organisms, we simply fight them
tooth and nail often to no avail as we have yet
to get to grips with their role in the broader
ecology.
Walking around the trees and shrubs of the
savannah, or the fynbos of the Western Cape
or the bossieveldt of the Karoo, reveals something very important: all things are in balance.
The plants grow in the presence of insects, the
animals live with parasites, the soil brings
forth its wealth of nutrients while being infested with nematodes and fungi while the game
animals sustain themselves in the presence of
a collection of predators. So why is it that on a
farm there is such a fight between the farmer
and competing organisms?
The answer is quite simple: it lies in the ecological balance of nature and all things natural. As a species we have succeeded in select-
Many varieties of Peruvian maize (corn)
were well-known to the Incas for centuries
By
Jenny
Mealing
Flickr,
CC
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1129451
BY
2.0,