Inspired in my teenage years by Japanese organic farmer Masanobu Fukuoka through his book The One-Straw Revolution, I developed a deep fascination for organic pest control methods that eschew toxic chemical pesticides.

Yet, my formal education as an undergraduate in Forestry and a graduate in Horticulture revealed the limits of available alternatives: chemical pesticides were widespread and, in many cases, considered essential for plant cultivation.  Such a reality influenced my decision to avoid a career in floriculture, an industry that relies heavily on insecticides and microbicides to ensure flawless flowers for the market.

In 1995, my career pivoted to food safety, confronting me with the stark reality that food protection often relies on chemical pesticides, including gaseous fumigants.

Despite preventive measures such as insect screens, gap closures, and stringent cleaning protocols, my role as a food safety manager at the spice exporter, AVT McCormick Ingredients Limited, involved extensive regular use of fumigation, pesticide sprays, and rodent baiting.

I am proud, however, that I pioneered the use of stored product insect (SPI) pheromone traps to monitor pest populations in the Indian food industry and to limit pesticide applications by targeting SPIs only when thresholds were exceeded, as evidenced by pheromone trap counts.

My seven years at Pest Control India Private Limited (PCI), India’s leading pest control company, further opened my eyes to the pervasiveness of chemical pesticides as the primary pest control solution.

While my employer introduced glueboards for rodent control and I championed the adoption of SPI pheromone traps, pesticides remained the dominant tool at PCI and across the rest of the Indian pest control industry.

My subsequent twelve-year tenure in the agri-commodity warehousing sector, as the head of Pestinct Pro Solutions Private Limited, now India’s second-largest Pest Control Operator (PCO), underscored the difficulties of managing pests without resorting to chemical pesticides.

Grain storage in India, with its rudimentary infrastructure of basic warehouses with only floors, walls, and a poorly finished roof, necessitated frequent fumigation and protective liquid sprays to prevent SPI infestations, leaving little room for alternative methods like pheromone trap deployment, despite my expertise in the field.

After more than 25 years in chemical pest management, I found a fresh opportunity with the launch of my personal enterprise, Giridhar Pai Associates LLP (GPA), in January 2020.

Unencumbered by legacy practices or investor expectations, GPA embarked on a mission to seek and promote non-toxic alternatives to conventional pesticides.  Over the past six years, we have championed pest monitoring and prevention as the bedrock of Integrated Pest Management (IPM).  While the pest control industry is pivoting from IPM to Pest Risk Management (PRM), GPA’s approach is useful in either regime.  It doesn’t prevent our product users from adopting either programme for their requirements.

While pest monitoring and pest prevention are established IPM pillars in agriculture, they have long been relegated to the periphery in structural pest control.

Our persistent advocacy has carved out a niche for pest monitoring and exclusion as the starting point for any pest management program.

Pest Management starts with preventing pest entry and monitoring pest populations

Since 2020, GPA has ably demonstrated that unless pests are first prevented from entering and then monitored to establish population levels, the use of chemical pesticides is, at best, a stopgap measure.

In an industry rife with greenwashing and empty sustainability claims, GPA has quietly curated a portfolio of international products that meaningfully transform pest management—delivering genuine sustainability without resort to toxic chemicals.

The following are simple yet transformative innovations we are championing, changing the global pest management landscape one customer at a time:

1.  LEDs for Monitoring Flying Insects

Traditional insect light traps (ILTs) rely on fluorescent tubes: bulky, power-hungry, and wasteful.  Our partner, Pestroniks Innovations Pte. Ltd. of Singapore, revolutionised ILTs with its FLYght Traps, featuring patented bio-Visual Enhancer (bio-VE+) Technology.  FLYght Traps are compact, UV LED-based devices that consume only 20% of the electricity of traditional traps, and their LEDs last over 50,000 hours.  Their minimal waste and long lifespan make them a truly sustainable solution.  When paired with physical barriers such as air curtains, automatic door closers, double doors, and insect screens, FLYght Traps eliminate the need for chemical pesticides in flying insect management.

2.  SPI Pheromone Traps for Early Detection

SPIs are tiny and elusive, requiring specialised pheromone traps like Storgard and Serrico for effective monitoring.  These traps serve as early warning systems, triggering corrective action, such as cleaning, disposal, or treatment of infested products, when user-set trap count thresholds are breached.  Year-round SPI monitoring reduces the need for fumigants and pesticide emulsions, lowering the chemical burden on dry food products.

Prevention is the best pesticide

3.  Rodent Exclusion Through Preventive Measures

Traditional rodent control by trapping and baiting comes with major environmental risks: glueboards can harm predators, rodent baits pollute soil and water, and secondary poisoning is a global concern.  GPA advocates for proven alternatives, such as the RodeXit All-In-One rodent strip and Rodent Proof fill fabric, which block rodent entry through doors and structural gaps.  After these preventive installations, pest control efforts focus on monitoring and targeted intervention, minimising the need for traps or baits.

GPA’s leadership in sustainable pest management is rooted in practical, science-based solutions.  By prioritising prevention and monitoring, we are showing the pest control industry and our customers that pest control can be effective, environmentally responsible, and genuinely sustainable.

Can GPA assist you with your sustainable pest management programme?

Whether you are a PCO or a user of pest management services, we want to hear from you if you want to adopt a sustainable pest management programme.  It is not difficult to prepare and implement one, as global agreements, statutory requirements, and customer specifications all point to the need to reduce toxic pesticides in pest management.  

Consider the following sustainable measures of pest management for your customer or your site:

• A simple switch from UV-fluorescent tube traps to FLYght UV LED ILTs
• Preventing rodent entry through the installation of the RodeXit All-In-One seal and Rodent Proof Fill Fabric
• Installing Storgard Quick Change Dome and New Serrico Traps to monitor SPIs in the dry food supply chain

Contact us with your requirements, and we shall be glad to help you develop and implement your company’s Sustainable Pest Management programme.