Plant Disease Management In Sustainable Agriculture

Sustainable agriculture is the base of human society and economic development, which served to be the trend of world agriculture development. Researches and practice at home and abroad show that plant disease is a limiting factor in sustainable agriculture. Therefore plant disease management plays an important role in sustainable agriculture and has a great impact on food security, ecology security, economic development and social stability. Under the context of sustainable development, it means a great deal to do a research on plant disease management from both aspects of theory and practice according to China status.Based on the theory researches at home and abroad, this paper studies plant disease management in sustainable agriculture by applying the theory of economics, plant pathology, ecology, management science and so on.The former three chapters mainly study plant disease and sustainable agriculture and their correlation. In the first chapter of this paper, the background of sustainable agriculture is reviewed, the meanings and aims of sustainable agriculture are clarified, the modes of sustainable agriculture in developing and developed countries are concluded, what's more, ecological agriculture, intensive agriculture and efficient agriculture are introduced, the recent researches at home and abroad about sustainable agriculture are analyzed. In the second chapter, the meanings of plant disease and control are summed up; the importance of plant disease control is concluded; the current status of strategy and tactics in plant disease control are presented. As for the strategy, four strategies are summarized in the order of development; As for the tactics, six routine plant disease quarantine techniques are elicited and analyzed fully. Also, the evolution, advantages and shortages of these strategies and technologies are studied systematically. At the last of the chapter, the main problems in plant disease control are also pointed out on the basis of investigation and former study. The third chapter, dealing with the relationship ofsustainable agriculture and plant disease/control bridges the former chapters and the latter chapters.The progress of sustainable agriculture, which is conditioned by the externality of chemical control on plant disease in China, not only related with plant protection, but also with overall situation of sustainable agriculture. In chapter 4, the externalities of chemical control on plant disease are investigated from economics standpoint, and the concepts of externality and internality of chemical control on plant disease are proposed tentatively, at last the approaches of internality of chemical control on plant disease are put forward, i.e. technology innovation and institution innovation. At the end of this chapter, the merits and disadvantages of chemical control of plant disease are reviewed,the forms and sorts of externality of chemical control on plant disease are concluded and summarized.There are four entities during plant disease control period, i.e. farmer, government, enterprise, customer, whose behaviors have great effect on plant disease management in sustainable agriculture. However, neither systemic nor specific studies about the behaviors of these entities have been done. In chapter 5, the behaviors of these four entities are studied theoretically. On the side of farmer, whether they are rational or not or limited are investigated. On the side of government, governments' behavior that farmers needed are proposed, and four revelations are acquired by comparing governments' behavior mode of plant disease control between America and China. On the side of enterprise, some measures for optimizing enterprises' behavior are advanced, targeting the main problems that happened in pesticide industry. On the side of customer, their three aspects —requirement, food preference and consumption habit that impacts on plant disease control are analyzed.Based on investigation, farmers' behaviors are analyzed in chapter 6, such as behaviors on the purchase and use of pesticide, technical training and the requirement of training, comprehension and implement of IPM, knowing about harm induced by using excessive chemical pesticide. It shows that farmers' behaviors toward plant disease control are bounded rationality, according with the opinion of chapter 5. It also shows that most of farmers apply pesticide depending on experience.pesticide salesman,kith and technician, the influence of the media of broadcast and TV is not too big.What's more, most of farmers lack the cognition of excessive applying pesticide and self-protect measure;the consciousness of protect enviomment and safety are weakness; poisonings happen sometimes; most of farmers throw away empty bottle (bag) at random; externality of chemistry control of plant disease emerges conspicuously; pesticide application is inefficient;human health has been threatened and ecological environment has been getting worse.Changing the actuality of plant disease control should strengthen the propaganda and education to farmers and improve the farmers diathesis.In the seventh chapter, four aspects about governments' behavior are analyzed, i.e. forecast and quarantine of plant disease, the training of farmers and personnel of plant protect, governments' behaviors that farmer needed ,the assistance that government supplied to farmers and so on. Researches show that most of fanners have a high demand of beneficial behavior from government , government should play an important role in plant disease control. In future government should aim at three aspects:(Doptimizing the service of plant protect; ?perfecting agriculture policy and increasing agriculture funding;(3)amending legal codes and rules. The information service in plant protect that government provided is just what farmer needed highly, especially plant disease forecast, beneficial to and aiding to farmers greatly. Government should expand its servicefield and specilize its service function. The result above accords basically with the theory result of Chapter 5. Based on these results, several suggestions of increasing the efficiency of government behavior in plant disease control are brought forward.Chapter 8 studies plant disease management thoroughly and systematically, aiming at the goal of sustainable agriculture, combining the problem of the externality of chemical control over plant disease(Chapter 4) and the analysis outcome of these entities' behaviors in plant disease control(Chapter5-7). This chapter also plays a connecting role between the preceding and the following chapters in the framework of this paper, i.e. concluding the former part and introducing the later part. In Chapter 8, the connotation and implication of plant disease management are revealed; the basic rules of plant disease management are elucidated, and the PDM system is described and analyzed systematically. Also, the relationships within this system are clarified, the functions of the ingredients in this system are explored, and soft management and hard management of plant disease are discussed. At the last of Chapter 8, several proposals of optimizing plant disease management to push sustainable agriculture are put forward, technology innovation under hard management and institution innovation under soft management are the important approaches to optimize plant disease management and propel sustainable agriculture.Technology innovation and institution innovation are two approaches to alleviate the externality of chemical control, also the important backbone for optimizing plant disease management and developing sustainable agriculture. In chapter 9, elementary search on the models of technology innovation, the importance of its application in plant disease management and the aim of technology innovation in China are explored. At the end of chapter 9 technology innovation in plant disease management is put forward, including breeding for...