ANR BLOG FEED

Blue Alfalfa Aphid Issue Summary

Of all of the insecticides evaluated against blue alfalfa aphid (BAA) by Eric Natwick of Imperial County, almost every insecticide applied to alfalfa this spring gave initial knockdown of BAA. Blue alfalfa aphid populations resurged in 7-10 days....

Case Studies of LBAM and EGVM: Community Perceptions of Emergency Responses to Invasive Species in California

I encourage readers of this blog to peruse the attached file, written by Margareta Lelea, a post-graduate researcher at UC Davis, with Frank Zalom, Jim Greishop and Jennifer Sedell.  This study, funded by a Cooperative Agreement between the USDA (United States Department of Agriculture) and UC Davis, is a comparison of the emergency responses on the part of the USDA and CDFA (California Department of Agriculture) to the light brown apple moth (LBAM) and European grapevine moth (EGVM).

The experience of the LBAM emergency response was negative for many people on the Central coast of California.  Seemingly dead set on the eradication of LBAM no matter what the cost, the USDA and the CDFA brooked very little community input as they attempted to put into place a program of aerial pheromone application accompanied by a quarantine regime composed of intrusive field inspections, disruption of farm business operations and costly field closures.

In contrast, the regulatory experience of EGVM emergency response was more positive for many (including me), and was a program which found its success in the working relationships between local regulatory officials, locally based USDA officials and agents (many of whom were already here for the LBAM program), UC Cooperative Extension and a diversity of other groups including growers and pest managers.

As one can draw from reading this report, that these two programs should have really different outcomes currently should then not be surprising.

The hugely unpopular LBAM emergency response program has had its budget virtually eliminated through the representative political process and has garnered a real distrust of the USDA and CDFA by the affected communities, which to some extent continues to this day.

LBAM continues to flourish on the Central Coast, although it still doesn’t cause a lot damage besides not being anything that can’t be managed easily with environmentally sensible methods. Nevertheless, LBAM still affects trade in a big way, the current situation being a threatened closure of our Canadian and Mexican export markets for berries or broccoli should LBAM arrive there in any shipment of either of these commodities.

In contrast, EGVM has been eradicated following its brief appearance in Santa Cruz County in 2011 and its numbers have been dramatically lowered in other infested areas such as Napa, Sonoma and the Central Valley.

The attached paper does a first class job in outlining and comparing LBAM and EGVM emergency responses and shows us what we and the regulatory agencies can learn from these two experiences to guide us in the future.

Some key takeaways from the paper:

1- Agencies lose credibility and trust from communities when they undertake actions against the will of the people.  This the USDA and CDFA did in spades on the LBAM emergency response, pushing ahead while initially ignoring many community concerns about their activities and creating a perception of an abuse of science and government power.

2- Agencies gain credibility and trust through a willingness to engage and effect change, which includes responding to the needs of the communities and the environment and adapting new information from science as appropriate. This was clearly the case with EGVM, as USDA and CDFA agents (many of whom were also involved in LBAM programs) worked together with local regulators, UC Cooperative Extension and growers to arrive at a workable, successful solution to the issue.

3- Aerial spray programs must be enacted only with the support of affected communities.

 

I guess what I think about after reading through this report is how did the LBAM emergency response go so awry?  Most of the USDA and CDFA people involved in the response are very competent, decent people who truly want to serve the public and the agricultural industry in the best possible way.

Have these agencies become bureaucracies, who, to quote the philosopher Ludwig von Mises, “are no longer eager to deal with each case to the best of their abilities; they are no longer anxious to find the most appropriate solution for every problem” and whose “main concern is to comply with the rules and regulations, no matter whether they are reasonable or contrary to what was intended."?   I would today answer in the negative, because even if the USDA and CDFA started out behaving as the bureaucracies described by von Mises, they both seem to have learned from their experience and turned the corner pretty promptly. Indeed, that both seemed to undergo pretty well a paradigm shift in their approach on the EGVM emergency response just a few years later after the difficult start on LBAM is a testament to their ability to learn and evolve to best serve the publics who have entrusted them to keep invasive pests out of California.

 

Kudos to a really thought provoking and illuminating report by Dr. Lelea and her colleagues about two signal invasive pest responses.  A must read for entomologists, regulators and pest managers on the Central Coast.

 

It is Time to Strip Alfalfa for Lygus Management

Useful resources:

• Monitoring Lygus in cotton
• Stripping alfalfa hay
• Movement of Lygus in the Landscape
• Natural enemies in cotton

        With growing conditions continuing to look favorable for cotton growth and development, fruiting is beginning or well underway in some locations. Fruiting is being noticed in Firebaugh area at 6^th main stem node, which is line with early season temperatures we have experienced and good planting dates.

        Setting the early fruit sets the plant up for the rest of the season. With a shortage of the irrigation deliveries this year, the season must be as compact as possible. Protecting early fruit is critical in these water short conditions.

        The lack of rainfall during January to March should limit the severity of Lygus. While there are weed hosts, mostly short pod mustard, along roadsides and in many dryland grain fields, most hosts were limited in their ability to establish in a wide area.

        Lygus will be a localized problem. Movement will occur from neighboring sources, most likely other cultivated crops. Key sources for Lygus include safflower, forage alfalfa and seed alfalfa. Within safflower and alfalfa forage, the Lygus population can be managed to prevent mass movement into surrounding cotton fields. Lygus is closely managed in seed alfalfa can still acts as a major source.

        Safflower is currently being treated for Lygus to prevent the first generation from

reaching adulthood and breeding or flying into neighboring fields. In recent years, most safflower has successfully been managed to prevent Lygus from infesting cotton. However, management in the future will become more challenging as the few available insecticides are difficult to procure and more reliance is being placed on fewer active ingredients. For many growers, safflower plays a critical role in their crop rotation which addresses key environmental issues related to groundwater protection.

        Alfalfa forage is the most common crop which Lygus prefers. It is a unique crop in our cotton landscape because it is harvested frequently for its vegetative biomass, not its reproductive parts, e.g. fruit, lint, seed. Providing even a limited habitat during cutting can have a substantial effect on mitigating Lygus movement into cotton. During the June and July cuttings, if uncut strips of alfalfa are left in the field, Lygus will move to them and stay until the next irrigation cycle, when they return to the larger alfalfa field.

         Limiting the movement of Lygus into cotton not only protects the fruit during this critical early stage but can reduce the need for insecticide applications. This allows additional natural enemies to build and helps reduce pressure for the development of insecticide resistance.

        Early intervention through the cultural control of Lygus source management will help set the cotton up for high fruit retention, shorter season and fewer secondary insect and mite problems, as well as reduce costs in early insecticide treatments.

 

Enjoy California sweet potatoes around the clock and calendar

Sweet potatoes are perhaps most familiar in the U.S. smothered with melted marshmallows in a Thanksgiving casserole. But baked, boiled or raw, they can be a healthful part of California cuisine any time of year. California is a significant producer of...

2013 No-till Cotton Production Field Day May 30

Cover crop growing in cotton and tomato residues.

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