National Potato Council's PESP Strategy

Describe your Organization’s Five-Year Goals Related to Pesticide Risk Reduction

The National Potato Council’s Pesticide Environmental Stewardship Program (PESP) five year project goals will focus on reducing the risk to humans and the environment from the use of pesticides by conducting activities related to enhancing the adoption of advanced Integrated Pest Management (IPM) techniques, developing sustainability guidelines, provide awards for excellence in environmental stewardship, collect actual pesticide use data, promote the adoption of pesticide resistance management strategies, encourage the use of bio-pesticides and educate growers on the long term value of improved pesticide stewardship.

What do you envision doing (broadly) to try to resolve your major issues?

Based on recent survey work done by the United States Potato Board there are fewer than 3000 potato growing operations in the United States. For that reason NPC activities through the PESP focus on more direct outreach to a targeted group of growers. This allows NPC to receive more direct responses from growers than would be possible with larger commodity sectors.

Integrated Pest Management Activities
Promotion of Biopesticides
Environmental Stewardship Awards
Sustainability Standards
Data Collection
Resistance Management
Grower Pesticide Use Survey

Goal 1 and Tactics

Integrated Pest Management Activities

During the next five year period NPC will revise their current IPM Survey to serve as both a baseline survey tool and as a measure of increased adoption of advanced IPM techniques. The survey will focus on the use and adoption of more advanced techniques since other more basic techniques are almost universally adopted by the industry and the use of advanced techniques generally presupposes the use of basic techniques. The survey will be conducted twice in the 5 year period.

Goal 2 and Tactics

Promotion of Biopesticides

The use of bio-pesticides will be promoted as a component of IPM and emphasis will be placed on IPM survey questions that shed light on the perceived efficacy of bio-pesticides and current adoption rates. NPC will expand outreach to bio-pesticide companies and seek additional incentives to have those companies participate in trade show and educational activities at Potato Expo 2009 and subsequent Potato Expos. Potato Expo is a new industry wide educational meeting and trade show we believe will attract over 800 of the industry’s key leaders. The use of bio-pesticides will be made an expanded component the scoring criteria for the NPC environmental Stewardship Award. NPC will develop a comprehensive list of companies with registered bio-pesticides and those developing bio-pesticides. That list will be used to expand communications and interaction with those companies on the pest management needs of the potato industry and to allow the companies opportunities to educate growers at state and national meetings.

Goal 3 and Tactics

Environmental Stewardship Awards

NPC will continue to present a yearly Environmental Stewardship award to two farming operations that demonstrate excellence in stewardship of the land, water and environmental resources on their farm. NPC produces a high quality video detailing the specific activities on each farm that merit special recognition. The PESP program and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) support for that program is acknowledged in the video verbally and in graphics. The videos are distributed to all state potato grower organizations and targeted media outlets. Environmental Stewardship award winners will be participate as presenters during the Potato Leadership Institute to highlight the role of environmental stewardship.

Goal 4 and Tactics

Sustainability Standards

NPC is through committees made up of growers, processors, distributors and public interest groups is developing guidelines for sustainable potato production. A key component of long term sustainability will be developing a plan and appropriate metrics to implement systems that will encourage the long term reduction of inputs per unit of output while maintaining the economic viability of the farm. Potato growers have always been successful in improving their productivity. The sustainability guidelines will focus those efforts and more directly emphasize an ongoing reduction of input usage to promote a reduction of risk to humans and the environment. The key to effective sustainability guidelines will be establishing a data set that captures farm history and trends over time so that reductions in input use per unit of output will be measureable.

Goal 5 and Tactics

Data Collection

NPC is committed to a data collection project that will collect actual pesticide use data from individual growers and after data management steps to ensure that individual grower’s identities are protected make that data available to EPA. Having actual use data specific to individual geographic areas will allow better characterization of actual risks to specific ecosystems. A better understanding of these risks will help target risk reduction activities by both EPA and the industry. Currently the potato industry is working to develop the organizational structure to develop software (proof of concept is complete on data management), mange data collection and establish rules to govern data release. The potato industry is providing funding for a portion of the project but additional grant funding is needed.

Goal 6 and Tactics

Resistance Management

NPC has developed and maintains in an online format an effective decision making tool for growers to make pesticide use decisions based on rotating modes of action to prevent resistance development. By maintaining the efficacy of products with targeted sites of action a reliance on broader spectrum products is minimized. This reduces the overall impact on the environment and maintains treatment options. NPC will continue to maintain this resistance management tool for growers.

Goal 7 and Tactics

Grower Pesticide Use Survey

NPC will conduct through mail and email a general survey of potato growers on their attitudes and knowledge of pesticide use and the role of human and environmental risk reduction. The survey will focus on broader aspects of pesticide use than just IPM. For example NPC wants to establish a baseline on application decision making, use of custom applicators, knowledge of bio-pesticides, application techniques, pesticide storage and other on farm practices. This survey would be completed twice during the five years and would not be a part of the IPM effort.