Abstract
This work addresses the deep history of pest crops and plant diseases in historical agriculture development. It explores how insects and pathogens co-evolved with domesticated plants, adapting themselves to the trend observed in agriculture since its origins of simplifying ecosystems. They accompanied the crops in the biological unification provided by the colonization of the New World. They became phenomena closely associated with large monocultures, favored by radical interventions performed into landscapes and ecologies. The capitalistic system in agriculture gave economic importance to diseases and pests so that the knowledge developed to understand and control insects and harmful microorganisms to crops had to deal with economic interests. Phytopathology and agricultural entomology integrated the knowledge that constituted industrial agriculture, based on monocultures, intensive mechanization, and agrochemicals use. The consequences of the widespread use of pesticides for environments and bodies have stimulated contemporary ecological criticism. At the same time, they originated or strengthened biological methods of pest control and agricultural practices alternative to the industrial standard. Both integrated pest management and agroecology were based on recognizing pests and diseases as phenomena related to the ecological imbalance of conventional cultivation systems.
Keywords
Pest crops; Plant diseases; Agricultural history; Entomology; Phytopathology; Ecology