2016 Annual Report for EW16-010
Redefining Learner-centered Education to Build High Impact IPM Partnerships
Summary
This project aims to promote two SARE goals: 1) enhancing quality of life, and 2) protecting health and safety of farmers through support Extension faculty in enhancing their capacity through direct experience in creating jointly-conceived, learner-centered integrated pest management (IPM) education. The focus of this novel approach to teaching and learning, called Adaptive Learner-Centered Education (Halbleib and Jepson, 2016), is to enable decision makers (farmers and others) to expand their skills in implementing locally-relevant practices for pesticide risk management (PRM) and IPM through taking new actions using decision-support resources. The long-term goals of this project are to: 1) increase the capacity of farmers to implement higher levels of IPM through redefining how Extension education is designed and conducted, and 2) foster a network of faculty across Oregon to support each other in learning together about PRM, IPM and learner-centered education.
Objectives/Performance Targets
This report covers activity between April 1, 2016 and December 31, 2106. We have received a nine-month no cost extension to December 31, 2019, given a family situation over the past year that did not allow us to keep on initial project timeline.
The overarching goal of this project is to enhance the capacity of OSU Extension faculty through collaborative projects with their grower audiences. Through Adaptive Learner-Centered Education (ALCE), project leaders are supporting each project member in the design and facilitation of a visioning session with stakeholders to generate the outcomes for the desired education program. The next step is the design of the teaching and learning experiences based on the skills that are required to address a specific pest management challenge.
A key policy of this program that we are focusing upon elimination of pesticide hazards, and reduction of risks associated with pesticides, in an IPM context. We are highlighting those chemistries that are considered to be highly hazardous by prestigious international panels. These compounds are slated for elimination globally, and we are informing industry partners, farmers and applicators when products that they are using fall under this classification. Although some highly hazardous pesticides are registered for use in the USA, and EPA has determined that they can be used without unacceptable risks, we are contributing to the global effort to move away from highly hazardous pesticide use by informing our audiences and by identifying less hazardous alternatives. In doing this, we also provide the potential for access to high value markets where highly hazardous pesticides are already prohibited. The definition for highly hazardous pesticides includes products that are classified as hazardous by the WHO, products that are mutagenic, teratogenic, or carcinogenic, products that are listed under the Stockholm (persistent organic pollutants), Montreal (greenhouse gas elicitors) and Rotterdam (requiring prior informed consent when being imported across a national border), and products where there is evidence of unacceptable impacts. Paul Jepson has compiled this list of pesticides, and it has been subjected to international review. A full outline of this analysis will be provided in subsequent reports as this policy is enacted.
Project Team Member Summaries
Stuart Reitz, Extension faculty, focuses on cropping systems in the Treasure Valley of eastern Oregon. For the focus of his education program Stuart has identified onion thrips and the Iris Yellow Spot virus they transmit. Onion production is a major industry in the Treasure Valley region, and is the most severely impacted area by thrips in the US. There is a risk of pesticide resistance in thrips driven by the perceived crop risks that elicit overuse of some insecticides. There are options for increasing adoption of alternative practices to pesticides, as well as a data-driven decision support aid that will be co-created with the IPPC faculty. We will develop a quantitative pest risk assessment tool to assist growers in determining risk to specific onion plantings as a function of variety, location and other management practices. A portfolio of grants has been obtained to support the process of data gathering and analysis, given the complexity of this project. This fall, under NIFA-ARDP support, Stuart co-led the first Crop Pest Loss Impact Assessment (CPLIA) in Oregon to achieve a detailed understanding from the input supply industry and growers of pest damage to onions and the control measures used, including the costs associated with these. This provided an opportunity for some of the grower input that underpins ALCE education program design. The outputs from the CPLIA process, originally developed by faculty at the University of Arizona, will be used to inform education design and tool development within this program. His goal is to reduce input costs associated with insecticide use, and improve the profitability of onion production in the Treasure Valley. Stuart feels the insight from this project could aid other onion growing regions in reducing the cost, and toxicological burden associated with thrips management. In the Treasure Valley, grower consultation and tool development are continuing.
Clive Kaiser, Extension faculty, focuses on tree fruit, wine grapes and wheat-vegetable rotations in northeastern Oregon. Clive is interested in the adoption of sustainable practices coupled with realizing market advantages through certification programs. He has been working with Salmon-Safe, processors and growers to overcome pest management constraints in a historic wheat-pea farming system while still addressing salmon protection requirements. His longer-term goal is to support growers in understand the value of beneficial insects in pest management that results in growers installing habitat on their farms.
Under EPA-Clean Water Act support, he has developed a guide to pesticides that determines their eligibility for use under Salmon Safe certification, including specific information about toxicity to Salmonidae, and label information regarding target pests and risk mitigation requirements. We are extending this guide to become a prototype pesticide selection and risk mitigation tool, spanning human bystander, vertebrate wildlife, aquatic life, pollinator and natural enemy risks. This will be tuned to the specific opportunities and constraints of pea-wheat farmers including application technologies that are used locally, localized climate and weather information, and cost constraints, where some less toxic pesticides are more than 15-fold more expensive to apply compared with conventional, broad-spectrum alternatives.
Darrin Walenta, Extension Agronomist in northeastern Oregon, focuses on seed potatoes, grass seed and mint oil production. His educational goals revolve around producing mint and grass seed with reduced organophosphate (chlorpyrifos) insecticide use, as well as encouraging certification to access higher value markets given the low market price of natural mint oil. Chlorpyrifos is in review by EPA given revised human health effects data, and the pending decision may result in label losses. Thus, assisting growers in developing alternative strategies to move away from this compound is necessary for operational as well as risk reduction and management reasons. A visioning consultation with growers and experts is scheduled for January 24, 2017 in LaGrande Oregon, and Darrin attended an A-LCE workshop, and the CPLIA onion producers workshop in Ontario to develop some of the skills required to deploy this program. In data gathering it has become apparent that this is a complex and braided challenge, with uncertainties associated with pest presence, damage, pesticide efficacy and availability of IPM alternatives all affecting pesticide selection and use decisions. The alternative chemistries to chlorpyrifos that are available to growers include synthetic pyrethroids, which are toxic to natural enemies, and neonicotinoids that are toxic to bees and birds, and this program will also seek to avoid risk substitution as an outcome.
Silvia Rondon, Extension Entomologist at the Hermiston Agricultural Research and Extension Center (HAREC). The major focus of Silvia’s program at OSU is insect and vector management in potato production. There are concerns and indications that pesticide resistance to neonicotinoids may be emerging for Colorado potato beetle. A newer colleague Ken Frost, a plant pathologist with expertise in ecological modeling, has joined this effort at HAREC. The visioning consultation for irrigated crops was conducted at HAREC in October 2016. One key outcome from this was preservation of available pest management tools including pesticides, and the proposed education focuses upon pesticide efficacy, integrated with resistance management. Education outcomes will include better pest and pesticide management including advance planning for monitoring, selection of the most appropriate chemistries, best practices for application and risk reduction. All of this must comply with the complex market and quality constraints of the potato processing industry.
Sylvia and Ken, under NIFA-ARDP funding, participated in an initial CPLIA workshop for the potato industry that will generate data for use within our program.
Rick Hilton, Research Entomologist, works with the tree fruit and wine grape industries at the Southern Oregon Research and Extension Center. Rick Hilton and Mary Halbleib received an Oregon Department of Agriculture Pesticide Stewardship Partnership Technical Assistance grant with Paul Jepson (IPPC) and Len Coop (weather and climate-based decision support tool development, IPPC). The purpose of the grant is to support education and resource development to assistance farmers (wine grape, tree fruit, hay/pasture) to implement new practices that will reduce the pesticides that reach the surface waters of the Middle Rogue Watershed. Rick Hilton is leading a group including the local Soil and Water Conservation District, Oregon Departmental of Environmental Quality, IPPC faculty and representatives of numerous pesticide applicator groups, to create education that reaches many applicators in this community. Under WSARE funding, we have conducted an initial, multi-industry visioning consultation and we are designing two education events for 2017, using an ALCE framework.
Rick and IPPC faculty are working to develop a pesticide application management DST, which will be incorporated within applicator decision flow using the ALCE framework that we are employing within the WSARE-PDP program.
Clare Sullivan, an Extension faculty for field crops in the Willamette Valley had planned to implement a joint project with Darrin Walenta in mint oil production to reduce organophosphate insecticide us. As of February 1, 2017, she will have a new position at Oregon State University with the Small Farms Center in Central Oregon. Given her need to focus on this transition we have agreed that Cassie Bouska will be invited to take her place.
Cassie Bouska, Extension agriculture faculty in Myrtle Point, SW Oregon coast, working in horticultural crops and cranberry production has been invited to join this project.
Accomplishments/Milestones
Forming a Functional Education and IPM Network Across Oregon
To help foster a network of Extension faculty that can make progress towards more effective IPM education partnerships we have implemented a multi-tier communication process. There have been three newsletters, three WebEx video conference meetings and many one-on-one calls between Mary and Paul and the team members. The topic of each WebEx call highlights an area of the ALCE process and then a member shares their progress in this area within their project. Topics have included visioning session design and consultations with grower groups, CPLIA as a tool for understanding pest management in a given cropping system and community level engagement within a pesticide stewardship partnership.
We had our initial in-person ALCE workshop on October 10-12, 2016 at the Hermiston Agricultural Research and Extension Center. All members of the project attended and we had another faculty member join the effort. Given the revised timeline for the project we were not able to work on each person’s project because the visioning consultations were not all completed. We did review the output from two visioning consultations to learn from those experiences. The group also explored the intricacies of the ALCE approach, and they also shared the IPM and education aspects of their projects. There is interest in the entire project group to design a model pesticide resistance education program that can be adapted for use across the state. The group began the work to develop a program guide for this education program.
At the close of the meeting the group completed a survey that focused on changes in skill and professional development needs. Using a retrospective pre-test, where 1 is no skill or ability and 7 is a high level of skill or ability, the change scores indicate there were significant levels of perceived change in skills for: designing an active learning experience (+2.14), conducting an outcome visioning session (+1.86) and crafting outcome statements (+1.43). The group shared their top needs in order to become more effective in extension education: 1) adult education training, 2) getting more feedback from clientele, 3) a tighter network of professionals to work together on education programs, and 4) more time and funding.
There is evidence of mutual support with the group. One example is that Clive and Stuart are planning to attend Darrin’s consultation, and that part of the group traveled to Ontario to learn more about crop pest loss impact assessment with Stuart. We have also had a faculty member at HAREC, Ken Frost, join the group.
The initial section of the case examples publication to capture farming system details and describe the IPM challenge and education opportunity has been completed for most projects.
Impacts and Contributions/Outcomes
Impacts and outcomes will be captured later in the project.