Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Other partnerships have emerged to help growers develop the skills to
use pheromones to disrupt mating. In Michigan, the Center for
Agricultural Partnerships helped organize and find funding for codling
moth mating disruption in apples. David Epstein, the project's manager,
recognized the importance of additional knowledge support for growers,
but learned from other partnerships that when free monitoring is pro-
vided, some growers do not learn about the limitations of non-lethal
pest-control strategies. His partnership invested more resources in ori-
enting growers to this new strategy and less in free monitoring as an
incentive for adoption. He reports: “in my opinion, any time you are
attempting to . . . change social behaviors, you have to do intensive
network building.” This partnership had a substantial effect on the
Michigan apple industry, expanding pheromone mating disruption from
850 acres in 1999 to 8,300 acres in 2001. The CAP partnership is no
longer active, but most of the grower-led networks to coordinate area-
wide mating disruption still are. Gerber is still involved in subsidizing the
technology. Prices for apples have been terrible, and Michigan apple
acreage has dropped by 25 percent, but the tenfold increase in pesticide
resistance has made this pest-management strategy relatively attractive.
CAP organized a mating-disruption partnership for California walnut
growers, but the volume of orchard space that must be disrupted contin-
ues to be an economic obstacle.
Pheromone mating disruption is an eco-rational technology requiring
networks of expert scientific support without precedent in agriculture.
This technology will fail economically without sophisticated understand-
ing of insect ecology and its dynamic behavior across time and space.
It contrasts vividly with the simplicity of spraying a pesticide. These
insects (at least the males) may die a happy death, but without a constant
support of expert knowledge, growers expose themselves to serious
loss.
Knowledge Networks
The human actors described in chapter 4 cannot successfully deploy the
agroecological strategies detailed in chapter 5 without the kind of
dynamic knowledge exchange that requires networks. Agroecological
partnerships constitute networks which facilitate the generation of new
