IPFM
Integrated Pest & Fertility Management
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What it Means
Whilst
there has been widespread acceptance in conventional Best
Practice Farming of the importance of "Integrated Pest
Management" (IPM) as crucial to the success of intensive
irrigated crop management in achieving significant
improvements in farming systems, it has failed to recognise
and focus the importance of nutrition in this process.
By adding "Fertility" to the IPM phrase, we aim to
encourage a significant shift in understanding that will
allow enhancements to this process, resulting in decreases
in chemical usage, increased fertiliser efficiency, further
decreases in insecticide and fungicide usage, increase
water use efficiency and improved soil structure allowing
better fuel efficiency for tillage processes.
Sucking insects such as thrips and aphids are present due
to excesses of nitrates (amine/amine) relative to plant
sugars. They are not present due to an abscence of high
value chemicals.
Plant sugars are a reflection of balanced nutrition with
ample phosphates available to the plant to achieve optimum
yield with a high mineral density.
A fully functioning soil humus and biological cycle will
then provide the plant nitrogen in a controlled manner to
match its demand.
How do you define your Best Management
Practice?