Beginning of Essay
What is the goal of agriculture? Mainly, it is to produce healthy food, affordable for consumers to purchase, while ensuring that farmers are able to earn a decent income. Recently, with greater environmental awareness in society in general, it is also now very im ....

Middle of Essay
.... as long as agriculture itself. But the pest pressure faced by farmers is now as great as it ever was: the world's fast-growing human population needs to be fed from an always shrinking base of agricultural land, and the substantial damage that can be inflicted by pests (e.g. insects, diseases, weeds, rodents, birds) on crops is the margin between a good harvest and a bad one. Pests can reduce the quality of a harvest as well as its quantity. Since the quality of food is increasingly important to consumers, a pest could reduce the value of a crop or make it unsaleable. But it is important to keep in mind that pests are not the only cause of yield redu ....