Author: Howard Wearing
ISBN 978-0-473-48730-0
RRP $92.00. Order from Nationwide Books.
Farewell Silent Spring tells the story of how, in the course of 50+ years of dedicated R&D, highly toxic broad-spectrum pesticides were removed from the pipfruit orchards of New Zealand. It shows how spraying by the calendar, regardless of need, has been replaced by pest monitoring, biological control, and sophisticated techniques like mating disruption and selective chemicals that are toxic to pests and safe to beneficial species. Integrated fruit production, and then Apple Futures, as the new programme became known, is shown to be on a par with organic production in terms of biodiversity and safety to the environment and human health, while maintaining the premium fruit quality required by export markets. New Zealand apple growers can say farewell to the “Silent Spring” predicted by Rachel Carson in her landmark book of 1962.
The New Zealand horticulture industry has a reputation for innovation, with growers developing new and better techniques, and constantly linking through to the sector’s research providers. We are living in extraordinary times and the impacts of Covid-19 will have profound and long-lasting effects on the New Zealand economy. It is said that history repeats itself so now is an ideal time to look back on past achievements in the New Zealand horticulture industry and apply those successful approaches to the current challenges facing the sector.
One of the most successful transformations of a national horticultural industry in the modern era is set out in "Farewell Silent Spring". The author, Howard Wearing, is a distinguished entomologist, a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand, the New Zealand Institute of Agricultural and Horticultural Science and, since his retirement, an Honorary Fellow of the Plant and Food Research Institute of New Zealand. He has devoted his scientific career to research in insect ecology, and the development and implementation of integrated pest management (IPM) programmes, and these topics lie at the heart of this magnificent book.
This is not some dry history of discrete events along a simple timeline. Instead it is a simultaneously entertaining, educational and insightful narrative of how the New Zealand apple industry moved from classical pest control reliant on chemical inputs to a sustainable pest management system over a period of 60 years. It is a compelling read that intertwines the development of Integrated Fruit Production (IFP) for the pipfruit industry in New Zealand with Howard’s personal memoir of a lifetime’s research. The book chronicles the ecological concepts of integrated pest management from early beginnings in the apple industry in New Zealand to the present day realisation of IFP and Apple Futures which provides New Zealand apple growers and marketers with a competitive advantage in overseas export markets. It details the people, places, challenges and ultimate achievements that constitute the remarkable path of New Zealand's transformation into a model of reinvention by an agricultural industry that many of us thought we were already familiar with, but which has much more to teach us. As with all good stories, there are villains and heroes (in this case from the insect world) but it is also an acknowledgment of the many dedicated scientists who have strived to develop better ways of protecting and enhancing one of New Zealand’s key horticultural industries. It teaches us to collaborate rather than compete and understand our history in order to create an eco-friendly future.
If you want to know how innovative, world-leading applied research has been in New Zealand and why it needs to be supported then read this book. It’s an acknowledgment and record of the work of dedicated researchers and scientists to find, develop and transfer to growers a better way.
Thanks to Chris Hale (ONZM, Fellow NZIAHS), George Follas (Product Development & Regulatory Lead Australasia, UPL Ltd), Anna Eriksson (Science Communicator, Fondazione Edmund Mach, Italy) and Art Agnello (Professor of Entomology, Cornell University, USA) for reviewing this book and for providing the text for this article.