Climate Change Turns Pests into a Major Threat to Food Security
Amid Indonesia’s efforts to strengthen national food security, threats to agricultural production are not only coming from land limitations, drought, or commodity price fluctuations. A growing menace is emerging from climate change, which is making pest organisms more aggressive and harder to control.
Since it was first reported attacking maize crops in Indonesia in 2019, the fall armyworm (Spodoptera frugiperda) has become clear evidence of new challenges for the agricultural sector. This invasive pest, originally from the Americas, has spread rapidly and caused serious damage in major maize production centres. However, the problems faced by farmers today are far more complex than the mere emergence of a single new pest species.
Climate change is altering the relationship between plants, insects, and the environment. Rising global temperatures, shifting rainfall patterns, and the increased frequency of extreme weather events are creating conditions that increasingly favour many pest species. As a result, modern agriculture is confronting a dual challenge: maintaining crop productivity while adapting to rapidly changing ecological dynamics.
When temperatures rise, pests become more voracious. Insects are cold-blooded organisms whose biological activity is heavily influenced by ambient temperature. As temperatures increase, their metabolism accelerates. They become more active, consume more food, develop faster, and produce larger numbers of offspring. This phenomenon explains why pest outbreaks often follow periods of warming and why climate change is expanding the geographical range of many pests. Some species can even produce additional generations within a single year under warmer conditions. Research indicates that a one-degree Celsius rise in average temperature can significantly increase crop losses for major staples like maize, rice, and wheat, which are primary energy sources for billions of people. Climate change thus threatens agriculture not only through drought and floods but also by enhancing the ability of pests to exploit cultivated plants, turning once manageable organisms into more aggressive and unpredictable threats.
The common response to pest population explosions has been to increase the use of chemical pesticides. For decades, this was seen as the quickest and most practical solution. However, experience across many countries shows that over-reliance on chemicals creates new problems. Intensive use of synthetic insecticides exerts high selection pressure on pest populations, allowing tolerant individuals to survive and breed, leading to increasing resistance and declining pesticide effectiveness. Furthermore, chemical pesticides often kill beneficial insects such as predators, parasitoids, and pollinators. The reduction of these natural enemies can cause pest populations to rebound even more vigorously, a phenomenon known as pest resurgence.
These conditions demonstrate that a strategy focused on total pest eradication is unwise. From an ecological perspective, the goal of pest control is not to eliminate all insects but to maintain their populations below the economic injury level.
The philosophy of Integrated Pest Management (IPM), long introduced by experts, is becoming increasingly relevant in the era of climate change. IPM advocates for managing pest populations sustainably by using a combination of complementary control methods. It teaches that the presence of pests in certain numbers is part of the ecosystem’s balance; the objective is to prevent population explosions that cause economic loss to farmers. This approach positions natural enemies—predators, parasitoids, and biological control microorganisms—as allies in naturally maintaining pest population stability. In sustainable agriculture, success is measured not by the number of insects killed but by the ecosystem’s ability to maintain its equilibrium.
One biological agent gaining significant attention is the entomopathogenic fungus Beauveria bassiana. Its mode of action differs fundamentally from chemical pesticides. The fungal spores attach to the insect’s body surface, germinate, and penetrate the cuticle. Once inside the host, the fungus develops and produces compounds that disrupt the insect’s physiological functions, ultimately causing death. The primary advantages of Beauveria bassiana are its relative selectivity and environmental friendliness. Its use leaves no harmful residues and poses a much lower risk to non-target organisms.