Why: To
improve the dialogue about pests, pesticides and integrated pest management.
Who: The
California Department of Pesticide Regulation and the University of California
Statewide IPM Program, in a project known as Pests, Pesticides and IPM.
How:
Through a two-year series of workshops, focus groups and conversations leading
to an April 17 IPM Summit held for a packed house in Davis, California.
What’s
Next? Making it happen.
At the summit, the Pests, Pesticides and IPM team presented
recommendations and summit speakers shared ideas on how to move IPM forward to
an audience of more than 200.
“One things I was happy about was that pretty much everyone
accepted the idea that pests are part of the human experience and everyone has
to manage pests,” said Jim Farrar, director of UC IPM. “That’s a good shared
foundation. What we have to agree on as a society is how we manage pests.”
The recommendations from the project team were distilled from listening
sessions focused on pest management in landscapes, structures and agriculture, plus
workshops focused on policy and communications and technology and innovation.
“The recommendations were a synthesis of these meetings we held
all around the state,” Farrar said. “They’ll also be captured in a white paper
published later this summer.”
Here are the team’s recommendations, what it called pathways to
the next generation of IPM:
1) Re-invest in
IPM at every level: basic and applied research, extension, and education.
2) Increase
critical thinking and creative solutions about pests and pesticides by using best practices,
such as systems thinking, that engage diverse stakeholders in local and
regional innovation collaborations.
3) Make it
easier for individuals, businesses, farms, agencies and organizations to choose
integrated approaches to managing pests and pesticides:
a) Drive the
demand for IPM through synergistic partnerships with industry, commodity,
community, educational, research, and government organizations.
b) More effectively
partner with
pest management
professionals and practitioners to become trusted advocates for effective IPM.
c) Partner with
the retail industry to improve resources available to consumers about selection
of reduced risk pest
management solutions.
d) Be creative
in engaging community organizations, homeowner associations, and other
non-traditional partners, particularly those groups that are trusted by
California's diverse communities, to increase their capacity for representation
and engagement in IPM.
e) Create
incentives for IPM that focus on reduced-risk pest management, resource
conservation, sustainability, communication, and use of social sciences to
increase adoption of IPM.
4) Bring new pest management
tools, practices,
and technology, including reduced-risk active ingredients, to market
more quickly by
reducing regulatory hurdles, particularly for biopesticides.
5) Take
advantage of the front-line knowledge and role of field workers and municipal
applicators to improve early detection of pests, recommend lower risk approaches,
safe practices in the workplace and at home, and to effectively interact with
the public.
The project ends in September, but Farrar is hopeful that
the conversation will continue and focus on ways to move the recommendations
forward to help make IPM the way everyone manages pests.
