Pest damage and arthropod community structure in organic vs. conventional tomato production in California.
Abstract
To test common assumptions that the reduction in agrochemicals on organic farms allows the conservation of biodiversity but has some cost in terms of increased pest damage, we compared arthropod communities and pest damage levels to fresh market tomato Lycopersicon esculentum on 18 commercial farms in California, USA. These farms represented a range of management practices, with half of them operating as certified organic production systems and half as conventional operations. Purported drawbacks to the adoption of organic farming include an increased incidence of pest damage and higher risk of pest outbreaks. Although insect pest damage levels varied across the spectrum of farm management practices, they were not associated with whether the farming operation was organic or conventional; organic and conventional farms did not differ significantly for any type of damage to tomato foliage or fruit. Although conventional and organic farms shared a similar range of arthropod damage levels to tomato, we detected a significant difference between the actual community structures of arthropods associated with the crop. Using canonical discriminant analysis, we found that whereas herbivore abundance did not differ, higher natural enemy abundance and greater species richness of all functional groups of arthropods (herbivores, predators, parasitoids and other) distinguished organic from conventional tomato. Thus, any particular pest species would have been associated with a greater variety of herbivore species (diluted) and subject, on average, to a wider variety and greater abundance of potential parasitoids and predators, if it occurred in organically grown tomato. Trophically based community parameters, specifically species richness and relative abundance of functional guilds, were clearly associated with farm management category (organic vs. conventional). However, the abundance patterns of prominent pests and natural enemies were associated with specific on farm practices or landscape features. Fallow management, surrounding habitat and transplant date of the crop field were strongly associated with arthropod species that explained the major variability among farms. Insecticide intensity was a weaker factor. Other factors, such as distance to riparian habitats and tissue nitrogen levels, did not emerge as indicators of pest or natural enemy abundance. This comparative study of active commercial farms does not support predictions of increased crop loss in California tomato when synthetic insecticides are withdrawn. It highlights the importance of large-scale on-farm comparisons for testing hypotheses about the sustainability of agro-ecosystem management schemes and their effects on crop productivity and associated biodiversity.