Insects provide vital ecosystem services to agriculture like pollination and pest control. These services which are available ‘freely’ in nature are crucial for sustaining food production. Having ignored this fact, in our greed to produce more, we have resorted to modern agriculture methods requiring high use of chemicals, causing extensive damage to the providers of ecosystem services. The results are quite evident – declining food production, degraded natural resources, increasing food insecurity and poverty levels. Its time to rethink and return back to a eco system based approach to agriculture which respects and allows other forms of life in the ecosystem to survive, thereby contributing to our survival. This issue primarily looks at the role of insects in sustainable agriculture.
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Honeybees in mountain agriculture
Uma Partap
Bloom sequences keep pollinators in fields
Margaret Mayfield and Vasuki V Belavadi
Pollinators – Key for agro biodiversity conservation
Mathew John , Robert Leo
Insects or Pests? Only practice decides
Krishnan
Sam Adams
Honey Bees – Inevitable for our survival
S.M. Shanthaveeraiah
Satish Pande
Recalling biodiversity – Farming the Agnihotra way
Tejasvi Naik
John Holland
The Narayana Reddy Column – Living with insects
Honey Bees – Farmers best friends
Sujana Krishnamoorthy , Vijaya Pastala
