The pest control industry is focused on the regulation and management of any species that is defined as a pest. Often times a species becomes a pest when it is detrimental to a person s health, the ecology or the economy. Pest control has been around about as long as agriculture. Protecting crops from competing species of plants and insects is economically advantageous and it can help to maximize food production.

The Start Of The Pest Control Industry

The first method of be employed in the pest control industry was the conventional approach since it was easy to destroy weeds by burning them or plowing them under and it was easier to kill the larger competing species such as birds that ate the seeds. There is also a long history in the pest control industry of using techniques such as crop rotation, companion planting which is also referred to as intercropping or mixed cropping, and selective breeding of pest resistant plants.

Often times the direct actions of humans will cause many pest problems. Therefore, it stands to reason that modifying these actions can greatly reduce some pest problems. For example, in the United States when raccoons started tearing open garbage sacks many individuals started using bins with locking lid to deter the raccoons from visiting their house.

Another global phenomenon is the house flies that tend to accumulate whenever there is human activity around, especially if the activity involves exposed food or food waste. For some seaside resorts a similar problem as come in the form of seagulls. The birds often get food scrapes from tourists and then they soon become dependent on the food source and begin to act aggressively towards humans.

Humane pest control and deterrence has started to gain ground in the pest control industry by using animal psychology rather than destruction after concern about animal welfare was started in the United Kingdom. An example would be the use of the Red Foxes territorial behavior against themselves along with non-injurious chemical repellents to solve any problems.

The pest control industry has been using chemical pest control for about 4,500 years when sulfur compounds were first used as an insecticide. Chemical pest control was a known practice among the Chinese and Egyptians. However, chemical pest control didn t become the method of choice until the industrialization and mechanization of agriculture around the eighteenth and nineteenth century. The development was then boosted when synthetic insecticides such as DDT were discovered in the twentieth century. In the pest control industry today, chemical pest control still remains the predominant method although the long term effects have more people turning to traditional and biological pest control methods.