Integrated Pest Management Is Explained
Friday, July 5th, 2019 -- 10:20 AM
Clark County UW-Extension’s Crops and Soils agent explains Integrated Pest Management.According to the UW-Extension Newsletter, Integrated Pest Management, or IPM, involves scouting crops for weeds, disease, insects, nutrient deficiencies and other injuries. IMP utilizes all available pest management tactics, which includes cultural, physical, biological and chemical controls to prevent economically damaging pest outbreaks. IPM’s goal is to reduce risk to human health and the environment. The first step is scouting the crop all season long. Unless the damage is at or above an economical threshold, a management decision may be to continue to scout the field for pest. The point of IPM is to scout and then make a management decision to control a pest when it’s at or above the economical threshold. The control could be a pesticide or another practice to limit loss from a pest. The pest could be an insect, disease, weed, an antibiotic cause or a nutrient deficiency. The most important aspect of IPM is to identify the cause of a crop injury. Applying an insecticide when the injury is a result of nutrient deficiencies will not improve the crop. Always identify the cause of the injury or symptom.
Applying a control after identifying an injury may not be effective either. Economics must be a factor. Just spraying a crop in case something would happen is money spent a farmer may not recoup. When margins are tight, spending with little or limited economic return is not good management practice. July is an important month in crop production season. Many crops are growing rapidly and developing fruit and/or seed, so scouting will pay benefits to prevent an economic loss from a pest injury. Scouting will also reduce production cost if a planned application is not required. If a farmer doesn’t understand or can’t identify an injury or symptom in the crop, it will be important to ask for help or hire someone to scout your fields. One outbreak controlled in a timely fashion will pay for the scouting fees. If you’d like more information, contact the Extension Office at 715-743-5121 or email [email protected].
Feel free to contact us with questions and/or comments.