How snakes can help farmers.

How snakes can help farmers.Most people know about the destructive effect of insects on crops, but rodents can be equally destructive. This is the area snakes help; Insects are often blamed for attacking seedlings, when the real culprit could be a rat or a mouse. Not only do rodents damage seedlings, they also spoil stored grain with feces and urine. We treat insects with insecticides, we bang sticks and use scarecrows and other means to scare off birds, but when it comes to rodents, what can we do? In many cases we simply ignore them, or we resort to poison to kill them. Unfortunately we can’t control what animals may eat the poisoned rodents. see A better way to control rodents, and one that’s often overlooked, is to encourage natural predators to do the job. Rodents rate high on the feed list of many snakes. If the world’s snakes were eliminated, the rodent population would increase dramatically which would affect crop production. Apart from the threat to food security posed by rodent population growth, increased disease outbreaks would put a heavy burden on the health services of many countries, especially developing ones. Pest management This alone should be enough for the farmer to realize that, far from being a menace, snakes are the farmer’s friend and can be used as part of an integrated pest management system.We should be encouraging mole snakes (Pseudaspis cana) and house snakes (Lamprophis) into crop lands. In coffee plantations in India, snakes (including venomous ones, such as cobras, kraits and Russell vipers) are used to control rodents.