This video provides information on integrated pest management, which uses non-chemical methods for controlling pests that can destroy crops.
Students will learn that farmers can avoid using pesticides (or use fewer pesticides) if they introduce natural predators, rotate crops, plant crops early, use barriers, or use other varieties of crops.
There is an interactive quiz included for students to test their understanding of sustainable practices.
Teaching Tips
Positives
This video uses both photographs and sketches to illustrate the concepts.
A full transcript of the video is available.
Additional Prerequisites
Teachers and students can set up a free account to comment online or record their quizzes.
Students should be familiar with the concepts of hybrid and genetically modified organisms.
Differentiation
Health classes could research the adverse effects of pesticides. Students could consider the ways that pesticides can leach into groundwater or run off into rivers and creeks.
Science students could reach out to faculty members or graduate students from local agricultural universities to request materials on integrated pest solutions suited to the local climate and crops.
Biology classes could use this resource to support lessons about evolution, natural selection, pressures on populations, genetics, or ecology.
Other resources on this topic include this video on regenerative farming, this course on food and farming, and this video about sustainable farming on the Oglala Lakota's Pine Ridge Reservation.
Scientist Notes
As the human population continues to grow, we need more and more food to meet the demand. As a result, pesticide use has continued to increase year after year. However, many pesticides used today have documented adverse, even deadly, effects on the biosphere. This resource explains how integrated pest management can be applied to cut down on pesticide use. This resource is recommended for teaching,
Standards
Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)
ESS3: Earth and Human Activity
HS-ESS3-3 Create a computational simulation to illustrate the relationships among management of natural resources, the sustainability of human populations, and biodiversity.
ETS1: Engineering Design
HS-ETS1-3 Evaluate a solution to a complex real-world problem based on prioritized criteria and trade-offs that account for a range of constraints, including cost, safety, reliability, and aesthetics, as well as possible social, cultural, and environmental impacts.
LS2: Ecosystems: Interactions, Energy, and Dynamics
HS-LS2-6 Evaluate the claims, evidence, and reasoning that the complex interactions in ecosystems maintain relatively consistent numbers and types of organisms in stable conditions, but changing conditions may result in a new ecosystem.
LS4: Biological Evolution: Unity and Diversity
HS-LS4-2 Construct an explanation based on evidence that the process of evolution primarily results from four factors: (1) the potential for a species to increase in number, (2) the heritable genetic variation of individuals in a species due to mutation and sexual reproduction, (3) competition for limited resources, and (4) the proliferation of those organisms that are better able to survive and reproduce in the environment.
HS-LS4-3 Apply concepts of statistics and probability to support explanations that organisms with an advantageous heritable trait tend to increase in proportion to organisms lacking this trait.
HS-LS4-5 Evaluate the evidence supporting claims that changes in environmental conditions may result in: (1) increases in the number of individuals of some species, (2) the emergence of new species over time, and (3) the extinction of other species.
