One of the main pest control concept in Biotic farming is “Biotic Community Balance”. Biotic farming discouraged pest control even if it is non chemical pest control like organic pesticide, organic pest repellent or mechanical pest control (light trap, yellow sticker, garden gun and etc).
Instead, we let nature take its course. We rely on food chain to control the pests in our garden.
According to Encyclopaedia Britannica, food chain is “in ecology, the sequence of transfers of matter and energy in the form of food from organism to organism. Food chains intertwine locally into a food web because most organisms consume more than one type of animal or plant. Plants, which convert solar energy to food by photosynthesis, are the primary food source. In a predator chain, a plant-eating animal is eaten by a flesh-eating animal. In a parasite chain, a smaller organism consumes part of a larger host and may itself be parasitized by even smaller organisms. In a saprophytic chain, microorganisms live on dead organic matter.“[1]
Based on food chain definition, each organisms is either consuming or being consumed by other organisms. Each pests found in our garden will has it’s own enemy. Theoretically, when the pests population increases it will attracts its predator aka beneficial insects. The beneficial insects will keep the pests population under threshold level.
Therefore, to control pests in our garden all we need to do is to find the balance in predator-prey relations. One of the method in maintaining the balance of the biotic community is planting sacrificial crop (I will explain more about this in my next posts).
Reference:
1) https://www.britannica.com/science/food-chain