Growing a Better Future through Responsible Crop Protection

THINAPOB/ADOBESTOCK; SULIT.PHOTOS/ADOBESTOCK In 2024, the top five concerns expressed by Americans were strengthening the economy, defending against terrorism, reducing the influence of money in politics, the rising cost of health care, and improving education (Pew Research Center 2024). While these are all critically important issues, the relative attention they receive is not proportional to the impact on society. For example, 8,352 people were killed in terrorist incidents in 2023 (Relief Web 2024). In contrast, globally, approximately 9 million people died in 2023 from causes related to hunger (Concern Worldwide 2024). Both are issues of extreme concern, but given the disconnect in attention compared to impact, how do we promote interest in policy issues that can directly improve the most lives globally? In the U.S. alone, almost 13.5% of American households (18 million) were food insecure in 2023 (USDA-ERS 2025), even though the availability of food has increased over the past 50 years (Kearney 2010). Many of us in the U.S. may take for granted the diversity, nutritional variety, and taste of unique ingredients when we live just a short distance away from the grocery store. But it is difficult to grasp what it takes to bring this quantity, quality, and diversity to our tables. Consider mangoes, an important source of nutrition and income for medium and smallholder farmers and a staple crop in tropical regions. More than 7,000 miles away from the U.S., there is a mango farmer named Veronica Kioko in Kenya (Fig. 1). Farming is Veronica’s livelihood, but every year, she faces a risk of losing 20–100% of her crop to pests (Muriithi et al. 2024). In the scope of global agriculture, mangoes are considered a minor crop, but to a farmer such as Veronica relying on them for income, every mango is important. Fruit flies, mealybugs, aphids, and whiteflies are all insect pests that can affect the quantity and quality of her crop. The availability of crop protection solutions to manage these pests has a direct impact on food abundance, economic well-being, and quality of life for farmers and consumers. In Kenya, a coalition of stakeholders worked to bring a new, approved pest management option, Isoclast™ Active (sulfoxaflor) insecticide, to mango farmers. The relatively simple step of making a new crop protection option, sulfoxaflor, available to smallholder farmers in Kenya positively affected production and human lives by increasing the annual mango yield and quality. Veronica articulated this value: “The extra income, in fact, is helping us to educate our children … it has helped in paying school fees” (Minor Use Foundation 2024). Veronica’s story is just one out of millions that illustrates the significant biological and social impacts of crop protection solutions. Kenyan mango farmer Veronica Kioko (far right) with her children. Author Carmen Tiu was the study monitor and sponsor representative for the research to support regulatory approval for sulfoxaflor use on mango. (Photo: Minor Use Foundation) Conventional modern agriculture supplies over 98% of the world’s food (Tal 2018). Thus, policies and regulatory frameworks that enable access to crop protection solutions and allow for the use of diverse practices are critical and have an impact on global nutrition and food security. Crop protection solutions are among our most valuable tools for protecting and optimizing food production. These tools include plant breeding (traditional and genetic engineering), fertilizers/biostimulants, pesticides (biological and synthetic), biological control, cultural practices, behavior-modifying chemicals such as pheromones, mass trapping, and other emerging technologies. The benefits these tools offer are directly connected to the quality of life for the ≈25% of the global population who work in agriculture (Roser 2023) and to our collective food security. In response to the lack of public understanding (and in some instances hostility) about the role of crop protection to promote a peaceful and food-secure world, the authors of this article organized a symposium at the 2023 Annual Meeting of the Entomological Society of America titled “Advocating Responsible Crop Protection to Influence Policy and Gain Public Engagement” (Fig. 2). It highlighted the importance of promoting public understanding and trust in science-informed crop protection. It brought together a diverse group of speakers from academia, government, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and industry (Table 1). Meng Wang presenting during the 2023 Entomological Society of America Annual Meeting symposium, “Advocating Responsible Crop Protection to Influence Policy and Gain Public Engagement.” Presentations as part of the Larry Larson Symposium “Advocating Responsible Crop Protection to Influence Policy and Gain Public Engagement” on 5 November 2023 at the Annual Meeting of the Entomological Society of America in National Harbor, Maryland. Collectively, the authors of this article promote the use of science-informed decision making to protect diverse options for global food security and to improve people’s lives. To provide a framework for advocacy on this topic, we formalize a new concept to encompass biological and socioeconomic outcomes. In this article, we define the term from the symposium title: Responsible Crop Protection. Responsible Crop Protection (RCP) is a science-informed, socially responsive, and collaborative approach to managing pests. It ensures that solutions are societally informed, economically viable, guided by stewardship, and empowered by community engagement and education. Responsible Crop Protection relies on collaborative decision-making among agricultural stakeholders, including private industry, academia, government, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), farmers, and consumers. RCP builds upon the principles of integrated pest management (IPM) to protect crops that support global food, fuel, and fiber needs in a socially responsive manner (Dara 2019). RCP is a pro-active response to modernize and build upon the iconic IPM concept. RCP must meet three criteria, and we identify five tenets to achieve that end. To meet the three criteria, RCP must 1) be effective for pest, vector, and pathogen management, 2) not cause unreasonable adverse effects on humans and the environment, and 3) be economical for farmers and consumers (Fig. 3). RCP provides a framework for evaluating crop protection innovations to ensure they respond to and benefit social needs. RCP that meets these criteria involves these five tenets: integrated pest management; technological innovation; regulatory compliance; environmental stew-ardship, human health, and wellbeing; economic viability; and community engagement and education (Fig. 4). Three criteria for Responsible Crop Protection. The five tenets of Responsible Crop Protection. RCP provides a framework that we believe facilitates more constructive action and conversation around contemporary crop protection needs. The following sections provide details regarding each tenet and how to put them into action. IPM is “a comprehensive approach to managing host stress that is economically and ecologically sustainable” (Peterson et al. 2018). IPM uses a range of tactics, including behavioral, biological, cultural, physical, and chemical, along with resistant crops that may have been developed through traditional breeding, precision breeding, or genetic engineering. RCP is not a replacement for IPM; rather, IPM is at the core of RCP. Embedding IPM in RCP builds on the legacy of integrating science-informed tactics for pest management, while heightening the social responsibility around the choice of tactics (Kogan 1998; Wise and Whalon 2009; Pedigo et al. 2021; Zhou et al. 2024). From its origin as “integrated control” (Stern et al. 1959) and “an ecological approach to pest control” (Geier and Clark 1960), the concept of IPM was based on concerns of overreliance on chemical pest control and the need for an approach based on understanding pest populations and using diverse tactics. As Stern et al. (1959) highlighted, “Biological and chemical control are not necessarily alternative methods; in many cases they may be complementary, and, with adequate understanding can be made to augment one another.” At the time, the authors recognized the need to replace highly toxic pesticides common at the time, which were used at high use rates, lacked selectivity, and had high environmental persistence. The thoughtful integration that was called for over 60 years ago is more accessible than ever with the expansion of low-use rate, highly selective pesticides, with low environmental persistence. As we apply IPM in the context of RCP, we reinvigorate deliberate programs to diversify tactics, minimize the environmental impact of the various tactics, enhance stakeholder engagement, and ensure economic returns to producers. Because contemporary pesticides are developed with an emphasis on sustainability goals and are applied with precision technologies, significantly lower quantities are used (Fig. 5; Corteva Agriscience 2025a). Corteva Agriscience incorporates the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals into the crop protection development process. With IPM at the core, RCP incorporates minimizing environmental impacts broadly. For example, in the past, tillage was part of effective weed control (Walsh et al. 2020), but responsible application of crop protection tactics emphasizes practices that limit soil disturbance and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. IPM at the core of RCP highlights that the concept remains a gold standard for pest management, but there are new tools and tactics available that can meet the benchmark for “responsible.” Modern agriculture stands as the only solution for achieving safe and sustainable global food security. This requires scientific innovation and societal acceptance of new crop protection technologies. Innovation is an area in which the collaboration of all sectors involved in agricultural production will be especially important to ensure that these technologies are developed and deployed in a way that benefits farmers and is understood by the public. The development of next-generation crop protection approaches must continue to advance favorable characteristics and enable the adoption of precision agriculture practices. Increasing development and deployment of scale-neutral technologies including artificial intelligence (AI) to manage, integrate, and interpret more data, along with the use of sensors, rapid diagnostics based on big data and machine language, more accurate sampling, and improved application technology via drones and robotics, creates options that did not even exist in the recent past for crop protection. The current and future demands to feed the world are driving the crop protection industry to move from the traditional “trial-and-error” discovery approach to predictive modelling and design approaches that enable development of effective, affordable, and more selective molecules with pesticidal activity. These molecules undergo a selection process that is aligned with sustainability goals and meet or exceed regulatory safety standards for human health and the environment. An example of this new approach is the CropKey initiative that Bayer CropScience put in place in 2024 (Bayer 2024). Additionally, Bayer is developing new tools and assays to generate relevant safety data earlier in the process, enabling fast characterization of candidate molecules in a high-throughput manner (Haas and Nauen 2021). This fast, early safety characterization then guides chemistry selection (e.g., by promoting molecules with more favorable profiles for bees and other taxa). Corteva Agriscience uses a similar approach to evaluate molecules in its Predictive Safety Center (Rasoulpour et al. 2025) and requires all potential products to meet sustainability requirements to advance in the development pipeline (Corteva Agriscience 2025b). At an early stage of pesticide development, the goal is to identify properties related to potential human, animal, pollinator, or other environmental concerns and discard candidate chemistry that would pose unreasonable risk before it ever advances. RCP embraces continuous improvement of existing crop management tools. It promotes development and use of tools to produce crops via conventional breeding or advanced technologies (e.g., gene editing, including CRISPR), reduced-risk biological and chemical pesticides, and precision agriculture (e.g., drones, sensors, smart systems, and AI-driven decision tools). Embracing innovative technology can exist in RCP because it is done in the context of support for a regulatory environment that priori-tizes health. The widely accepted precept that “whatever gets measured, can be managed” (FAO 2021) is a critical pillar for regulatory policies governing the development of crop protection products. Many consumers hold the view that food safety is dichotomous, and crop protection is either “safe” or “not safe” according to whether it is “natural” or “unnatural.” However, the revolutionary scientist Paracelsus (1493–1541) discovered long ago that “All substances are poisons; there is none which is not a poison; it is the dose that differentiates a poison from a remedy” (ChemicalSafetyFacts.org 2022). Thus, a science-informed approach to crop protection regulation relies on robust measurements as a basis for human and environmental health exposure and risk. Because contemporary pesticides are developed with an emphasis on sustainability goals and are applied with precision technologies, significantly lower quantities are used. RCP can only succeed when the science-informed regulatory frameworks and compliance policies are properly communicated, understood, and supported by the public and other stakeholders. 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