On every farm you have to deal with pests sooner or later. You can do a lot with integrated pest management (IPM), and if the farm is trying to build an ecosystem, there will hardly be a mass occurrence of pests, but you do need pesticides from time to time, especially on young plants.
On our farm, we mainly use two agents for this: neem extracts and chilli extracts. Both are herbal products that do not kill pests but keep them from eating. They also act as fertiliser and plant strengthener at the same time. We put either neem leaves or chilli peppers in a bucket of water and let it sit for a few days until fermentation starts. We then spray this "tea" on the plants, such as maize seedlings or vegetable plants. Both plants contain substances that pests do not like and therefore discourage them from eating. This "tea" also contains a lot of useful bacteria and other organisms that cover the plants like a protective coat and discourage pathogens from entering the plant.
When spraying the plants with chilli extracts, you just have to be careful not to spray against the wind, otherwise you will soon not be able to stand it yourself... ;-)
