Types of Agricultural Pests

Agricultural pests are responsible for a huge amount of damage, and a massive loss in revenue, every year in the agricultural industry. There are many types of pests that cause damage to agriculture, including insects, species of mammals and birds, slugs, invasive plant species, and virus and disease epidemics. Indeed, there is something of an arms race ongoing between the agricultural industry and the pests that seek to compete for the crops or feed on the farm animals.

Insect Pests

• Insects can cause direct damage to crops; these insects include hordes of aphids and grasshoppers who descend yearly on crops across the globe. Some insects can also cause more indirect damage to crops, such as with fire ants, who form a symbiotic relationship with a species of mealybugs. The fire ants protect the mealybugs in exchange for consuming the sweet liquid that the bugs excrete. Mealybugs attack crops, and the fire ants' attention helps protect them from predation. Other insect species, such as mosquitoes and ticks, can carry diseases and can affect populations of farm animals.

Slugs

• Slugs and snails are regular garden pests, and they are also a common pest in the agricultural industry. Slugs are general feeders and consume roots, stems, flowers and leaves. As such, a slug infestation can be especially harmful, as they are capable of consuming and damaging almost all parts of the plant. They often cause the most harm in vegetative and ornamental crops. Very few animals consume slugs, so their proliferation is unlikely to be controlled by a natural increase in predation.

Weeds or Invasive Plants Species

• Weeds or unwanted and invasive plant types, can infiltrate and out-compete with the planted species in crop plantations, and thus cause a reduction in productivity, and thus revenue. Examples of common weeds include common chickweed, which often competes with wheat and other crops of land use. Chickweed is a shallow, fibrous plant, whose stem is lined with bristling hairs. Another is the Jerusalem artichoke, which often affects soybeans, wheat and potato crops. It is sometimes cultivated for its edible tuber, but once established it can spread aggressively and is difficult to get rid of.

Diseases and Viruses

• Diseases and viruses cause widespread devastation in the agricultural industry. They can often spread quickly between crops and populations, and can be very expensive to eliminate once established. Recent examples of highly publicized diseases and viruses include the bovine spongiform encephalopathy epidemic in Britain --- also known as mad cow disease, which causes spongy degeneration of the brain and spinal chord --- and soremouth, also known as orf, which creates an infection around the mouth in sheep. Diseases that have caused devastation in crops include the infamous potato blight, which devastated Europe during the 19th century and caused much of the subsequent immigration from countries such as Ireland and Russia.