Bio Agro Economy
The common buzzard is successfully used as a bird of prey for controlling field mice in biological agriculture in some EU regions through the creation of perches for the common buzzard in agricultural crops which facilitate hunting for field mice.
As occurred recently in Germany, field mice can completely destroy agriculturally cultivated areas, mainly by eating away at the roots of fruit trees so that the fruit trees can be pulled up using just one hand and, therefore, nothing is standing in the way of uprooting. This happened to around 1 ha of connected orchards and the main cause was incomplete and completely undervalued field mouse control.
As field mice can multiply very quickly in a short amount of time and some have become resistant to traditional control methods, it remains important to regularly carry out effective methods of control. It is becoming ever more important within agriculture to use natural active ingredients and natural organisms, especially as consumer quality expectations are increasing and healthy eating is increasing in importance.
In the EU as well as worldwide these values take top priority and serve as a mark of high quality. Various, in-depth studies already show a rise in the use of biopesticides in the past 5 years - biopesticides now account for 5-10 % of the entire pesticide market and should reach a peak of 50% in the year 2050, meaning that every 2nd foodstuff would be protected from pests by biopesticides and this, in turn, significantly improves our health and environment.