How can insects save the lives of millions of people?

In its weekly program, "Plan B", the French newspaper Le Monde said that the future of human life may be dependent on insects, and what it called biological control of agricultural pests, pointing to convincing experiences in this context.

Pesticide disaster

The newspaper said that pesticides that were used more than 70 years ago and sprayed more than four million tons between 1970 and 2017, have proven harmful, as studies in France alone have shown that the deposits of these substances remain by 72% in fruits and 42% in vegetables.

Studies have shown - according to the newspaper - that pesticides have harmful effects on human health and the environment, and therefore it has become necessary to search for less harmful alternatives to combat agricultural pests that destroy crops and may lead to famines.

Biological control

The entomologist Hans Haren, who used to work in Nigeria, did a great job in this context, killing the ladybug insect that was wreaking havoc in the African cassava fields by developing a bee called "Lopezi", This has saved manioc crops in 27 African countries, whose diet relies mainly on this substance, thus avoiding realized hunger.

In the same context, a spokesman for the Galli farms in France, Bruno Gansel, said that they were able to develop tevlodrome mites, which specifically eliminate a type of mite harmful to apple farms, in an biological control program as an alternative to pesticides.

The director of research at the French Center for Scientific Research, Laure Kaiser Arnaud, says that with her team, she seeks to develop the "Kotizia tevia" insect, which they want dedicated to eliminating the insect that is harmful to the yellow corn, and calls for caution in order to avoid making mistakes that may lead to environmental disasters. .

Cautions and failures

On this occasion, the program indicated a failure that occurred in the late 1980s when the spotted beetle was transferred from China to the United States and Europe in order to eradicate another type of pest, but this beetle, which proliferated too much, attacked non-target species of insects, which resulted in damage Unexpected environment.

Although these experiments are useful and seem successful - as the program says - we are still far from providing an alternative to pesticides, especially since experiments of this type led to failures.