Organic vegetable production – managing pests and diseases
This 8-page fact sheet describes the effective ways of managing pests (including weeds) and diseases in organic vegetable production systems. It is an excellent source of information on the non-chemical practices used in integrated pest management (IPM), a term used to describe the use of integrated practices to manage any kind of pest including weeds and diseases. Organic pest management practices essentially involve the use of IPM without the use of synthetic chemicals. Organic standards allow some chemicals to be used including semiochemicals (synthetically produced chemicals that imitate sex or aggregation pheromones to disrupt the pest’s behaviour) and some inorganic or biologically-derived chemicals.