Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
gutted the original intent of the bill, see Van den Bosch 1978. Testing require-
ments for PCA licenses have continued to expand, and every new PCA must have
a bachelor's degree in biological or agricultural science and must pass several
written exams. These entrance requirements have, over time, reduced the
number of quacks, or “old boys,” who promoted spraying based only “on the
calendar,” thus frequently over-prescribing.
23. The PCA industry has not been able to standardize the market for its services
and establish consistent expectations for behavior by its members. Many affiliat-
ed PCAs point to the improved professional behavior of the industry over the
past two decades. For an analysis of the professionalization process, see Larson
1977. For a review of the ethical responsibilities of scientific professionals, see
Ravetz 1988.
24. For an analysis, see chapter 4 of Warner 2004.
25. Forty-nine of the 257 UC Farm Advisors participated in 24 partnerships, a
participation rate of 19.0 percent. Each Farm Advisor participated in only one
or occasionally two partnerships, the one exception being San Joaquin pomolo-
gy Farm Advisor Joe Grant, who participated in five. Five Farm Advisors were
Principal Investigators on BIFS and other grants, which dominated the activities
of the Farm Advisors for the duration of the grant. Farm Advisors played
a prominent role in leading twelve other partnerships. Half of these were
PMA-funded partnerships in which commodity organizations were awarded the
grant but depended on the Farm Advisor to organize the research and outreach
activities.
26. The regional IPM Advisors occupy an intermediary niche between Extension
Specialists and Farm Advisors, and the UC IPM program has repeatedly had to
negotiate their relationship to UCCE (Lyons 2004). UC leadership periodically
attempts to reclassify IPM Advisors as generic Farm Advisors, which UC IPM
directors have resisted actively and successfully.
27. Twenty-four of the 149 Extension Specialists (16 percent) participated in
partnerships, and five of them were principal investigators. The percentage of
Extension Specialists who participated in partnerships is slightly less than the
percentage of Farm Advisors, but an equal number were principal investigators.
28. Source: presentation by Richard Waycott at conference of Almond Board of
California, December 6, 2002.
29. Thirty partnerships included UC personnel explicitly as partners. The two
exceptions were Jeff Dlott's doctoral studies of farms owned by the California
Clean Growers farmers and his consulting work on the Code of Sustainable
Winegrowing Practices. In each of these cases, Dlott used UC-generated knowl-
edge, even though UC scientists were not formally enrolled.
30. Fourteen scientists participated in fourteen partnerships, but two participat-
ed in six each, driving the average number of partnership per scientist up to two.
Stephen Welter and Nick Mills, both scientists at UC Berkeley, have worked
respectively on pheromone mating disruption in tree crops and the biological
control opportunities that emerge after broad spectrum insecticides are removed.
