The key weakness of big hammer management is a philosophy that ignores basic ecological principles. Reacting to complex pest problems with one tool eventually fails because it does not consider problems as symptoms of a system whose intricate natural controls have collapsed. Michigan State University s Department of Entomology and Center for Integrated Plant Systems. That s what natural selection is all about.
Organisms find ways to adapt to new environments or toxic materials.
Over the years, a succession of chemical big hammers has reaped unintended environmental impacts, unnecessary human safety risks, unwanted expense, unwelcome problems with secondary pests and unnerving surges in pest problems. Md. Photo by John Teasdale. From 1965 to 1990, as conventional pest control intensified, estimated crop losses from insects, diseases and weeds increased from about 35 percent to 42 percent worldwide. That suggests conventional approaches are not effective in many situations. In Eastern states, corn and soybean growers have watched at least 10 species of annual weeds become resistant to triazine herbicides.