Sustainability transitions can revitalize integrated pest management

Integrated pest management (IPM) has been criticized for its inability to move agriculture beyond “curative” approaches for crop management. Today, IPM is primarily a set of tactics aimed at controlling pests, still relying on pesticides and pesticide management as a main tool. Yet, from its inception, the intent of IPM was to redesign agricultural systems, through planning and reliance on ecological processes, such that pest problems were largely avoided in the first place. The pathways and processes for achieving widespread cropping system redesign, however, were never fully articulated in the IPM concept. Frameworks from the field of sustainability transitions, such as the multi‐level perspective (MLP), can shed light on the dynamics and drivers of change in socio‐technological systems. In this framing, the ecological intensification and diversification of farms and landscapes that can create pest‐suppressive environments can be conceptualized as novel “technological” innovation niches that challenge the dominant socio‐technological regime. The conventional agri‐food system, however, is dominated by “lock‐ins” that have coevolved over time among farmers, supply chain participants, businesses, research institutions, policy, and public institutions to be resilient to change. Enabling IPM to transform agroecosystems requires overcoming a range of interconnected hurdles. When seen through the lens of the MLP, successful IPM will require not only new technologies and management practices but also social and political innovations that support collective action, social learning and transdisciplinary partnerships. Novel decision support tools for managing and predicting the dynamics of agroecosystems at farm and landscape scales can be instrumental for planning and implementing diversified production systems. Ultimately, institutional supports are needed to foster innovations currently obstructed by political pressure and to reconfigure power dynamics that maintain the status quo. Finally, conceptualizing agriculture and pest management as one component of a broader landscape that affects human well‐being reveals points of leverage and synergy to facilitate a much needed transition away from the pesticide‐intensive approaches that still dominate today.