PEST CONTROL – THE STORY

Have you ever heard ofthe Black Death? This pandemic, among the deadliest in history, has killedbetween 75 and 200 million people in Europe.And what do you knowabout phylloxera? At the end of the 19th century, this little insect crossedthe Atlantic to settle in France. In the United States, where he comes from,phylloxera did not affect the vines since they were resistant. In France,however, it wiped out the wine industry.MUCH DIFFERENT TODAY,RIGHT?Parasites have been aroundmuch longer than we have. And let's be frank: they will probably outlive us formany years. Since humans have chosen to settle, build shelters and cultivate,they have been looking for solutions to eliminate these damned freeloaders!Today we did ourranges in pest control, but the learning was not easy! Our expertise and ourcontrol methods are the results of thousands of years of trial and error.To highlight thisachievement, let's look back at the history of pest control, from pests to thepresent. Pest Control Sahuarita INANCIENT TIMES The first reportedcase of pest control is very sad.Before 2500 BC, ourancestors probably did not understand what it meant to stand up. So when theythought of a way to deal with the pests, they came up with the followingsolution, which didn't fix anything. Early farmers had found a rather lucrativesolution: they planted a ridiculously high amount of produce, and once thepests had their share, they were left with enough to eat.Okay. Can we probablygive them points for reflection?THE BEGINNINGS OF PESTCONTROLFrom there, things gota little better. Finally, in 2500 BC, a man decided enough was enough and wouldtackle the ruthless parasites ruining the fruit of his labor.The first to take thestep was the Sumerians. They used sulfur compounds to kill insects that atetheir crops.THE EMERGENCE OFPHENOLOGYIt was around 1500 BCthat civilizations began to understand that pest control was a science.Some Chinesecivilizations have learned the principles of phenology, studying variations inperiodic phenomena about the seasons. For example, they rotated crops toobserve the impact of one-time ecological events, such as dry seasons and thespread of pests.It was quite a change,knowing that until then, humans let themselves be dominated by these nastycreatures.THE TURNING POINTThe more peopleunderstood how infestations worked, the more experiments they made. So theChinese have studied phenology further, using plant insecticides as grainfungicides.But they weren't theonly ones perfecting pest control! Almost all ancient societies set out todevelop increasingly complex practices. For example, around 1200 B.C., theRomans killed mice, rats, and veritable green insects, while the Egyptians andChinese repelled or killed the pests that destroyed their crops with herbs andoils.It was essential toimprove pest control techniques; building communities depended on it. Indeed,it was truly a matter of life and death at the time. A single bad harvest couldspell the end of an entire village!