IPM Institute News: IPM in the Marketplace
May 2006
Volume 7 Issue No. 2
Contents
I. IPM Professionals
Honored at Fifth National IPM Symposium
II.
EPA Strategic Ag Initiative Documents IPM
Impacts
III.
IPM Modules a Click Away
IV.
Fifth National IPM
Symposium Session Material Now Available
I. IPM Professionals
Honored at Fifth National IPM Symposium
What
do IPM adoption measures, goats, fruit-fly attractants, school IPM
tactics and the Healthy Grown potato label all have in common? All
were among the credits earning recognition under the first
National IPM Achievement Award.
The
first honorees, drawn from 25 nominations from four countries,
received their awards during this year’s Fifth National IPM
Symposium:
Glades
Crop Care, Inc.
Glades provides consulting for high value and minor crop growers
in the Southeastern United States and Caribbean Basin. Based on
innovative research on tough-to-manage pepper pests such as
weevils and thrips, Glades developed a sophisticated program of
pheromone trapping, biological control using parasites and
predators, plant host manipulation and low-impact insecticides.
Glades emphasizes IPM adoption and pesticide toxicity measurement,
“rating” its growers and programs along the IPM continuum from
basic to advanced. Glades’ services go a step beyond the norm;
its consulting is accompanied by a food safety audit to ensure
comprehensive field- to-consumer protection.
Hawaii
Area-Wide Fruit Fly Integrated Pest Management Program
For the last few decades, Hawaii has been plagued by four fruit
fly species costing the agriculture industry billions of dollars.
This collaboration of federal, state and university scientists has
developed a system of field sanitation, biological controls and
lures to quell the problem. One of the largest producers on Oahu,
Aloun Farms, saw crop losses from melon fly drop from 22 to 1% in
one year. The approach was applied on over 200 small farms in 2004
and continues to grow each year.
Integrated
Pest Management Program, City and County of San Francisco
Don’t be surprised if you see goats or weed-flamers on county
property in San Francisco. These unique IPM practices are being
used as part of an unusual and aggressive approach involving an
annual workshop featuring regional and national experts, monthly
“technical advisory meetings” among city agency staff
responsible for pest management, and systematic ranking and
selection of pesticide options for minimal impacts. In 2005 San
Francisco hired and trained a small fleet of bicycle messengers to
treat 20,000 catchment basins with a biopesticide for West Nile
virus-carrying mosquitoes. These ground-breaking tactics have
produced big results; total pesticide use in the city and county
has decreased by more than 70% since the program’s inception.
One of the first in California, the effort has been a model for
government agencies nationwide.
Dr.
Marc Lame
Over ten years ago Dr. Marc Lame convinced the Monroe County
Community School Corporation (MCCSC) to test a new behavior-change
based approach to implementing school IPM. Soon after, MCCSC
achieved a 90% reduction in pesticide application and a 90% drop
in pest complaints. This approach, dubbed the “Monroe Model”
has been transferred to other school districts nationwide, with
similar success. Due to the work of Dr. Lame and the team he has
assembled, more than one million school children are exposed to
fewer pests and pesticides. Dr. Lame’s book, A Worm in the
Teacher’s Apple, chronicles his successes and obstacles
while moving IPM forward in school environments. Lame hopes his
book will foster public demand for IPM in schools and other arenas
as well.
Wisconsin
Potato and Vegetable Growers Association
Wisconsin’s potato industry has been recognized nationwide for
its dedication to IPM thanks to the Healthy Grown brand developed
by the Wisconsin Potato and Vegetable Growers Association in
collaboration with the World Wildlife Fund and the University of
Wisconsin-Madison. These partners established an independent
certifying organization, Protected
Harvest,
that maintains standards for the brand. Ten percent of WI farmers
now participate in the program, resulting in an average 64%
reduction in pesticide toxicity, which is measured using a unique
indexing system. Overall, there has been a 30% increase of
‘biointensive’ IPM adoption among participating farmers over
the last five years. Rather than simply applying monitoring,
sampling and thresholds, biointensive IPM emphasizes the
ecological basis for managing pests, resolving questions such as,
“Why is the pest there?” “Why aren’t natural enemies
providing adequate control?” “What system changes need to be
made to maintain populations below threshold, without chemical
intervention?”
II. EPA
Strategic Ag Initiative Documents IPM Impacts
Small
for-profit businesses and minor crop growers sometimes have
difficulty finding funding for IPM development. Tom and Anna
Peerbolt of Peerbolt Crop Management, a consulting company working
with caneberry producers and others, found the EPA SAI grants
program to be “one of the few sources of funding for a...
business like ours that helps test and implement our efforts.”
With
the funds, the Peerbolts sent trained scouts to twelve growers on
a weekly basis to focus on transitioning those growers to lower
risk pesticides.
Since
2004, SAI programs have helped implement IPM strategies on over
780,000 acres of farmland, reducing the use of the most highly
toxic pesticides by 30%.
SAI
has undoubtedly affected even more acres, but prior to 2004, there
was no efficient way to track impacts. In a partnership with American
Farmland Trust,
a national nonprofit devoted to preserving working farmland, EPA
created the SAI
Project Report Database,
part of the SAI
Toolbox.
Grantees, SAI project officers and EPA managers use the database
to document such things as number of acres affected by a project,
pesticide use and toxicity changes, and the project’s economic
viability.
According
to Jim Jones, director of EPA's Office of Pesticide Programs, this
is the first time an EPA non-enforcement unit has quantified the
impacts of a targeted grant program. The database has made the EPA
SAI a leader in a multi-agency effort to coordinate improvements
in outcome reporting. Members of the National Integrated Pest
Management Interagency Group will meet in June 2006 to discuss how
this resource can be used best by outside agencies, said Regina
Langton, an SAI coordinator.
“Without
[SAI’s] work on this,” said James VanKirk, director of the
Southern Region IPM Center, “I suspect the impetus for this
effort would have long since dissipated.”
In
addition to implementing IPM and reducing pesticide use, SAI
projects help growers cut cut pesticide costs. One Massachusetts
cranberry producer saved $81,000 after a 2002 SAI grant helped
reduce herbicide costs. This grant funded flooding for parasitic
weed control, covering 1,400 acres, the largest acreage of
cranberry production in southeastern Massachusetts.
SAI
grants help many non-profit organizations as well. Recently, Red
Tomato,
a nonprofit marketing organization that promotes local,
sustainable family farms to consumers and trade buyers, was
granted partial support for its Eco-Apple project. “Eco
Apples” must be grown to a rigorous IPM standard and growers
must keep records of IPM practices and pesticide use. The
Eco-Apple project is a collaboration that includes growers, crop
consultants and land-grant scientists. The IPM Institute serves as
the certifier, maintaining the performance standards and
coordinating on-farm inspections.
III.
IPM Modules a Click Away
The
University of Nebraska-Lincoln has improved its online IPM
Learning Modules
for schools. The new modules load more quickly, thanks to a new
flash format.
Module
topics include asthma triggers, landscape pests, site-specific IPM
techniques, and a new “treatment strategies” module.
IV. Fifth
National IPM Symposium Session Material Now Available
If
you were unable to attend the Fifth National IPM Symposium or
would like more information on a presentation or session, visit
the Symposium website
for abstracts, author contact information, and a number of
viewable presentations.
