Project Overview
Commodities
- Vegetables: beans, beets, broccoli, brussel sprouts, cabbages, carrots, celery, cucurbits, eggplant, garlic, greens (leafy), greens (lettuces), leeks, onions, peas (culinary), peppers, radishes (culinary), tomatoes, turnips
Practices
- Crop Production: cover crops, greenhouses, high tunnels or hoop houses
- Education and Training: demonstration, extension, workshop
- Pest Management: biofumigation, biological control, biorational pesticides, cultural control, eradication, field monitoring/scouting, row covers (for pests), sanitation, trap crops, traps, weather monitoring, weed ecology
- Production Systems: organic agriculture
- Soil Management: organic matter
Proposal abstract:
The Rhode Island State program will focus on advancing the integrated pest management (IPM) knowledge of agricultural service providers and vegetable commercial farmers in Rhode Island. Based on personal communications with farmers, agricultural service providers, URI cooperative extension peers (David Weisberger, Lisa Tewksbury and Jack Bashaw), farmers events, and data from a recent survey, Rhode Island's agricultural agriculture service providers and commercial vegetable farmers are interested in advanced Integrated Pest Management (IPM) educational programing. It was concluded that there is a need for deeper expertise in IPM, including pest identification, scouting, monitoring, and organic management. Agricultural service providers indicated that deeper knowledge of IPM is essential to provide advice to farmers who need to stay ahead of pest management. Likewise, farmers anticipate more training in topics, such as pest identification and monitoring, growing degree days, disease prediction models, cultural control methods, use of predatory insects, and application of organic products, would be crucial to meet their sustainability goals and meet the demands of the organic market. The proposed solution is to improve IPM education through targeted, in-depth training opportunities focused specifically on vegetable organic production. By developing and delivering advanced IPM webinars in the wintertime and in person farm hands-on activities in the summer for agricultural service providers and commercial farmers, the project will address existing knowledge gaps identified among participants. The educational approach will emphasize practical IPM tools and strategies suited to small-scale and organic operations, where crop rotation options may be limited and effective pest management is critical to farm viability. Based on the survey results, the preferred topics for this project are: (1) Pest/diseases/weeds identification, (2) biological control methods and cultural and mechanical control methods, and (3) monitoring tools such as growing degree days and disease prediction models.
Performance targets from proposal:
Ten service providers will learn about advanced Integrated Management tools. Agricultural service providers will share this knowledge with approximately 100 farmers in Rhode Island.
Ten commercial vegetable farmers will learn about Advanced Integrated Management tools. Co will share this knowledge with approximately 50 farm workers in Rhode Island