Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
UC Berkeley entomologist and researcher Nick Mills has encountered
numerous growers in orchards while monitoring the biological control
agents he introduced, but he reports:
They're very interested in knowing more about what's going in their orchard and
getting to recognize what some of the insects are that are there. . . . Somebody
has to spend time going around and looking, and the growers love it. They love
to see these reports of how few aphids they've got and how few moths they've
got and all the rest of it. They love to see these things, but then do they want to
do that monitoring afterwards? No. No. Does the PCA want to do that monitor-
ing? No. Does the grower want to pay a PCA to do that type of monitoring? No.
And it's unfortunate now, because there just is such a low return on agricultural
production that everybody is looking for ways to cut expenditures rather than to
[pay for monitoring]. So, it's very sad, really.
Monitoring information is not cheap. One chief reason agrochemical use
in California continues to be high is that better knowledge of agroeco-
logical conditions costs growers money, money that many would prefer
to spend treating a problem that might exist rather than discovering
whether or not a problem in fact exists. In some cases, capturing data to
treat a problem may cost more than the treatment. Partnerships try to
help growers recognize the value of more efficient input use and its
money saving potential. Putting agroecology into action requires more
sophisticated information about the condition of ecological organisms in
a specific farming system. Monitoring alone does not advance partner-
ships toward their goals, which depend on putting knowledge derived
from monitoring into action.
Partnerships Develop Agroecological Pest-Management Practices
Approaches to addressing pesticide-related environmental problems fall
into two main strategies: facilitating learning about strategies to
integrate farming systems so as to reduce or eliminate pesticides,
and demonstrating that new “softer” pesticides can effectively and eco-
nomically be substituted for disruptive and hazardous broad-spectrum
pesticides.
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Generally, BIOS and BIFS partnerships have emphasized the
former, intensive and more difficult approach, while PMA and
pheromone mating-disruption-based partnerships generally tend toward
the latter. Virtually all partnerships scrutinized the received wisdom
about economic damage thresholds, and facilitated applied research
demonstrating that many pesticide applications are or can be made
