Giving Compass' Take:

• Food Tank highlights how farms and farmers are utilizing bats to rid their fields of insects and other pests, instead of using harmful pesticides. 

• What other ways can we help reduce the use of harmful products? How can we work towards more sustainable food production goals? 

• To learn about what pesticide monitoring misses, click here. 

In Northwestern Italy, rice farms are incorporating bats to help manage pests and to reduce the usage of pesticides. Laura Garzoli, founder of YES!BAT and 2017 winner of BCFN Young Earth Solutions, tells Food Tank how farms can employ the use of bats, and why they should do so.

YES!BAT uses an Integrated Pest Management strategy (IPM) to eliminate pesticide use by encouraging bats to roost in rice fields. Bats can help since they are the foremost known predators of nocturnal insects, including several pests that can be found in rice fields. “The idea is that what is needed to achieve sustainable food production is what we already have, but has been neglected and threatened for decades: the power of biodiversity to sustain agriculture,” says Garzoli to Food Tank.

“Best IPMs have to take into account the conservation and the restoration of biodiversity, since biodiversity, through ecosystem services, is the key factor to achieve sustainable production. There is no shortcut and no easy way out. It has been estimated that, globally, 50 percent of pest species have become pests because chemicals killed their natural predators. There is no sustainability in the long term if there are no conservation efforts,” says Garzoli to Food Tank.

Read the full article on how bats can help reduce pesticide use in farms by Preetha Palasuberniam at Food Tank.