Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
growers are using fewer pesticides, or at least fewer organophosphates.
The PUR is an enormous database with objective numbers; however, it
has major limitations, and it should not be used as the only criterion for
evaluating agroecological partnerships or any other effort to intervene in
agricultural practices. Weather is the most important factor shaping pest
populations, and the PUR cannot distinguish between extension efforts
and broader trends in agriculture.
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Partnerships Extend Agroecology in Stages
Agroecological partnerships provided material support to enrolled grow-
ers, generally for 3-5 years while the partnerships were funded. During
that time they provided enhanced pest and nutrient monitoring, new
products (pheromones, water monitoring devices, cover crops, beneficial
insects), and a social learning process to support the deployment of
these. Essentially all partnerships reported pesticide or agrochemical
reductions on demonstration field blocks or orchards during the life of
the project.
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Leading institutional actors in the partnership phenomenon recognized
that documenting lasting changes in pesticide use after the completion of
a three year partnership would be the ultimate justification for their con-
tinued financial support by the state legislature or other funders.
Demonstrating that agroecological knowledge and resources provided
by a partnership during its funding period is not considered sufficient.
Unfortunately, some participant growers revert to the risk management
logic associated with pesticides. After some partnerships, the economics
of the alternative practices are simply prohibitive, either due to labor or
product costs. Simply put, pesticides are cheap relative to the skilled
labor needed to gather useful data on the agroecological condition of a
farming system. Ecological organisms and relationships in a monocul-
tural farming system do not behave as consistently as do agrochemicals.
“Transfer of Technology” is the dominant pedagogical paradigm
for UC Farm Advisors. This approach and the “adoption/diffusion”
model are based on assumptions not consistently valid for agroecologi-
cal partnership activities. In contrast to this, most partnerships focus on
learning how to
remove
or
replace
a (hazardous or disruptive chemical)
technology instead of
adding
one. Partnerships devote most of their
