Are all insects pests? Is it possible to manage the baddies without wiping out the goodies on a paddock or farm scale? Melanie Davison from Plant & Food Research and Abie Horrocks from the Foundation for Arable Research (FAR) talk about integrated pest management, a pest control approach that uses a mixture of cultural, biological and chemical methods to deal with crop pests. They explain the role of crop monitoring, plant and insect biodiversity, and patience, in this increasingly popular method of pest management.