------------
Transcript of the Episode and Show Notes
What is IPM? (Part One)
From UNH Cooperative Extension, this is Over-Informed on IPM
Hello, I am Dr. Anna Kate Wallingford and I would like to welcome you to my very first podcast episode! I’ll be releasing episodes every other Tuesday from now on that focus very specifically on a key pest of fruits or vegetables or a general IPM topic. For the most part I will be covering insect pests – that is my area of expertise but I do acknowledge an unfair bias towards insects in the field of IPM, so I’ll do my best to throw in some non-insect pests here and there. I’ll be calling up my buddies whenever I can, to get more in depth information about past and present research. You’ll be hearing their voices in this episode and in episodes to come.
My goal is that you will get informed on what you need to know and a whole lot more – maybe over-informed on things you don’t necessarily think you need to know but things that might inform how you make your pest management decisions in the future. This will be fun! Now my primary audience is commercial fruit and vegetable growers so many of the topics we discuss may not be appropriate for the home gardener but I hope you all find it interesting to understand all the things that go into growing our local produce.
Alright. So this whole series of podcasts will be dedicated to the practice of Integrated Pest Management, I feel that before anything else I need to spend some time talking about the philosophy. I say philosophy because IPM is kind of a hard thing to define and there’s a lot of important elements to IPM, lots of moving parts. Actually this is such an unwieldy topic, I may need several episodes to cover all the important elements so look forward to that!
But where to begin?! You could ask 100 IPM specialists what it is and get 100 different answers. These definitions might be influenced by when they learned about IPM themselves, or who they first learned it from. So I thought I would start with my first mentor:
Doug Pfeiffer, Virginia Tech: IPM is Integrated Pest Management. There are really two parts to the definition. Integrated means using all available tactics for a given cropping system: chemical control, biological control, host plant resistance, cultural control, etc. The management part means trying to suppress a pest population to an acceptable level, below an economically damaging level. We’re not trying to eliminate all of the insects. This definition has been around for a long time. However, while we intend to use chemicals as a last resort, growers are still using insecticides in every tank and its just a matter of which insecticides to choose. We’d really like to get back to the definition which is: developing a system where pesticides are only used as a last resort.
Anna: So that’s a pretty nice description, and although I’m going to bring in a few other voices to discuss important IPM concepts in different episodes, you will hear some of the same elements. Integration of multiple tactics – you’ll hear some folks referring to tools in an IPM toolbox. Management of pest populations in relation to some acceptable level. …and of course, our relationship with chemical pesticides.
Now, IPM isn’t all about chemical pesticides, …except for the fact that chemical pesticides are a part of every conversation about IPM…and most of the tools in the IPM toolbox are discussed in terms relative to chemical pesticides …also IPM as a field of study really wouldn’t be necessary without the development of chemical pesticides. So this concept of pesticides as a last resort is a popular one when defining IPM, and you’ll hear this echoed in discussions I had with several of my colleagues:
Rebecca Schmidt-Jeffries, USDA-ARS: IPM is a combination of many things. So it must be truly integrated, following a systems approach. It must follow that pyramid schema where preventative tactics make the base of what you do, like the old USDA food pyramid where bread used to be, then the more reactive the treatment is the higher up in the pyramid you go, with chemicals at the top. The things that work quick – the things at the top – tend to have the most non-target effects on the system.
Vic Izzo, Vermont: How do you define IPM? For me it’s a toolbox, as opposed to the pyramid that you often see – I see that pyramid and I want to puke sometimes. People kind of think of it as a defcon situation, where you start at the bottom and you move up through the levels and eventually you’re at chemical control. If you do it that way, you’re never going to solve your problem unless you use little bits and pieces of all these techniques.
Scott Lewins, Vermont: I think when it was first conceived it was basically an economic modeling approach. If you have insect populations below a certain level, it doesn’t make sense to apply pesticides because you’ll be losing money. Until you cross this magical economic injury level where you start losing money. I think that’s a very cynical view of IPM.
At some point, it became a buzzword for reduced pesticide use. I like to emphasize all the other things you can do first, like Vic was saying, you have this tool box – thinking about how you can tweak the system just enough to get a benefit without disrupting too much.
Usually that involves your behavior, like using a cultural control, or using a biological control, or promoting a biological control. Enough where you get enough benefit and you’re not disrupting the system. In the end, if you’re approaching that mythical point of losing money, then go ahead and apply a pesticide and lose less money.
Anna: Now I don’t want you to think that I’ve juxtaposed those definitions to cast shade on anyone …Rebecca and Vic are in complete agreement over how these things play out. They just have different ways of conceptualizing the balance between different controls.
For another, very different take on IPM:
Yolanda Chen, UVM: I think about IPM in a fundamentally different way from most people. Where I’m coming from is thinking about the origins of crops and there pests. I don’t think a lot of people really think about where these crops originate in these far flung places, in centers of origin like China, Papua New Guinea, India, the Andes, where the Incans were, and meso America as well as many others – there’s also centers in Africa.
So we have these crops that are basically aliens. So some of the pests are able to make it across oceans and continents to make it to crops here and there are other ones that kind of shift from feeding on a local weed to feeding on crop plants as well.
For me this idea of integrated pest management is to think more about: How we can use allies, or natural enemies, that are out there co-exisiting? What has happened during that transition into crops? Can natural enemies make that same transition? If not, what are some remedial, or band-aid, efforts we can make to reduce negative impacts on the rest of the community?
Something like insecticides is a really blunt hammer that kind of kills everything. The way I see IPM and where it’s moving is to be based in ecology, and to use the most precise tools to minimize that disruption on the entire community. So not a “scorched earth” policy but a strategic drone strike.
Anna: And actually, this point of view from Yolanda really harkens back to the original mentions of integrated pest management being a balance of chemical and biological controls. SO lets take a look at the history…
Well before IPM was ever mentioned in the literature, back at the turn of the last century, when hybrid corn was a new technology, there was the concept of “economic entomology” – essentially techniques developed for farmers by specialists, by nerds like me. A lot of these techniques are still used today and important components of IPM.
-World War II entomologists brought us the concept of “supervised control”. Although all these new chemical insecticides were incredibly powerful tools they thought, and I think rightly, that they were far too dangerous for the average American to use willy nilly and that they should only be used or authorized by entomologists – kind of like how certain medications can only be administered by a doctor. Now pesticides have only gotten safer since time marched on, and they are strictly regulated by the federal government today…but just imagine if you had to come and see me to get permission to control insects on your farm.
The first mentions of IPM show up in the 50s, actually they first called it “Integrated Pest Control” in the states, and the main focus was on the potential ecological damage insecticides cause to natural enemies of pest insects. How to use chemical and biological controls harmoniously in terms of economics. They didn’t use the term “ecosystem services” at the time but this really seemed like these guys were driving at – kind like don’t kill of the guys who are working for you.
The term “Integrated pest control” was later replaced by the Australian term “Integrated Pest Management” – a result of a decade-long international debate over terminology which, truth be told, no one really cared about at the time. The terms were pretty much used interchangeably. Because IPM became to be seen as a check on pesticide use, the concept gained in popularity during a period of American history where we were really just understanding how much of an impact we could have on our environment. Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring was published in 1962, where the potential impacts of DDT were brought to the American public. This was a huge part of the movement that eventually lead to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency. And with the creation of the EPA, our government also created sources of funding to develop IPM programs. Some of these programs still exist and that is why I’m talking to you now.
With this influx of funding came the next big stop in history brought us the Huffaker Projects which were launched in the 1970s. The Huffaker Project always sounded like a jazz group to me…
…but in actuality, the Huffaker project put a bunch of mathematician entomologists to work developing sophisticated systems, where pest monitoring identified economic thresholds, numbers which would trigger pest management actions for managing crops like alfalfa, cotton, apples, and soybean. Even now, computer models and apps are being developed where you plug in a number and the bot spits out a recommendation. Unfortunately, these neat little models don’t work for every situation and sometimes the best management practices for one pest are the opposite of the best for another pest. I mean threshold numbers are important parts of IPM in many systems but geographic regions can differ in key pests, markets can differ, value systems from farmer to farmer can differ. It gets complicated really fast.
This is why IPM is often referred to as a process rather than a set of rules. Or for another definition of IPM, probably the simplest definition so far:
Andrei Alyokhin, University of Maine: I define integrated pest management as: people who manage pests need to know what they are doing. There are a number of definitions, some more academic than others, but to me it boils down to whether a person knows what’s going on and what needs to be done. Or the person does something because everybody is doing it or it was done for a long time, or a sales rep from some company told them to do that…so this is not integrated pest management. Integrated pest management is actually knowing the system, knowing the problem and knowing the techniques that are being used.
Anna: So IPM is evidence-based, or science-based, and requires a whole lot of knowledge to do it right. Luckily, the government funding that brought us the EPA and the USDA and all the Huffaker project-style modeling systems – it also provides you with extension professionals like me. I’m here to help you wade through the science and find the practical bits and pieces you can apply to your operation so you can grow a crop using the most economically and environmentally sound practices possible.
Stay tuned for way more on IPM philosophy, maybe too much more, but before I leave you – a plug for cooperative extension everywhere. No matter where you live in our great nation, you should know that you have someone you can call in extension who’s job it is to help you with just about every aspect of your life. Do you want help growing roses in your back yard? Help deciding what to feed your kids? Did you see a bug and you kind of want to know what it is? Do a search for your local extension professionals and give us a call. Seriously. Call, write an email, show up in our offices, attend the events we organize. We would just love to hear from you.
That’s it for now. Thank you to all of my colleagues who have been so kind to help me out with this project and a very special thanks to Brentwood’s favorite son, Jason Lightbown, who wrote and performed our theme music.
End credits: 'Over-informed on IPM' is a production of University of New Hampshire Cooperative Extension, an equal opportunity educator and employer. All music is used by permission or by Creative Commons licensing. Views and opinions expressed on this podcast are not necessarily those of the University, its trustees or its volunteers. Inclusion or exclusion of commercial enterprises in this podcast does not equate endorsement. The University of New Hampshire, New Hampshire counties and the U.S. Department of Agriculture cooperate to provide Extension programming in the Granite State. Learn more at Extension.unh.edu.
