To attain food security, we must minimize crop losses caused by weed growth, animal herbivores, and pathogens (or “pests”). Today, crop production depends heavily on the use of chemical pesticides (or “pesticides”) to protect the crops. However, pesticides are phased out as they lose efficiency due to pest resistance, and few new pesticides are appearing on the market. In addition, policies and national action programs are implemented with the aim of reducing pesticide risks. We must redesign our cropping systems to successfully protect our crops against pests using fewer or no pesticides. In this review, I focus on the principles for redesigning the crop ecosystem. Ecological redesign aims to enhance ecological functions in order to regulate pest populations and diminish crop losses. Exploring ecology and ecosystems plays an important role in this transition. Guiding principles for redesigning the cropping system can be drawn from understanding its ecology. Ecosystem and community ecologists have identified four principal ecological characteristics that enhance the biotic regulation of ecological processes across ecosystems: (i) advanced ecosystem succession through introducing and conserving perennial crops and landscape habitats; (ii) reduced disturbance frequency and intensity; (iii) an increase in both managed and wild functional biological diversity, above and below ground; and (iv) matched spatial extent of land use (e.g., crop field size) with that of ecological processes (e.g., dispersal capacity of predators). I review the practices that link these ecosystem characteristics to crop protection in grain commodity cropping in both the crop field and the agricultural landscape. The review brings forth how basic understandings drawn from ecosystem and community ecology can guide agricultural research in the redesign of cropping systems, ensuring that technologies, breeding, innovation, and policy are adapted to and support the reshaped crop ecosystem.

为了实现粮食安全，我们必须尽量减少杂草生长、动物食草动物和病原体（或“害虫”）造成的作物损失。今天，农作物生产在很大程度上依赖于使用化学杀虫剂（或“杀虫剂”）来保护农作物。然而，由于害虫抗药性导致效率下降，农药被逐步淘汰，市场上出现的新农药很少。此外，还实施了旨在降低农药风险的政策和国家行动计划。我们必须重新设计我们的种植系统，以成功保护我们的作物免受害虫的侵害，使用更少或不使用杀虫剂。在这篇评论中，我重点介绍了重新设计作物生态系统的原则。生态重新设计旨在增强生态功能，以调节害虫种群并减少作物损失。探索生态学和生态系统在这一转变中起着重要作用。重新设计种植系统的指导原则可以从了解其生态学中得出。生态系统和群落生态学家已经确定了增强生态系统中生态过程的生物调节的四个主要生态特征：（i） 通过引入和保护多年生作物和景观栖息地来促进生态系统演替;（ii） 降低干扰频率和强度;（iii） 增加地上和地下的受管理和野生功能性生物多样性;（iv） 将土地利用的空间范围（例如，农田大小）与生态过程的空间范围（例如，捕食者的传播能力）相匹配。我回顾了将这些生态系统特征与农田和农业景观的谷物商品种植中的作物保护联系起来的做法。 该综述提出了从生态系统和群落生态学中得出的基本理解如何指导农业研究重新设计种植系统，确保技术、育种、创新和政策适应并支持重塑的作物生态系统。