Polly J. Hoppin, Sc.D.
Director, Agricultural Pollution Prevention Policy
World Wildlife Fund
I appreciate the opportunity to be here and speak with you today. I'm here to represent the environmental viewpoint, though I know in this audience there are many others, as we heard from Ken Evans, who agree that environmental and public health goals are high priorities for IPM. The commitment of the USDA staff working on IPM Initiative (Barry Jacobsen, Mike Fitzner, Bob Robinson's team at ERS to name a few) to environmental concerns--not just rhetorically but as it will translate into program evaluation--is impressive.
I'm going to focus my talk today on the importance of debating and then coming to agreement about societal goals, and establishing mechanisms for measuring progress towards them. I and others from consumer and environmental organizations think it is time for many in the IPM community to stop trying to be all things to all people. They should clearly describe the relationship between IPM and environmental and public health (which polls show Joe Q. Public cares very much about) and make ambitious plans to assist large numbers of farmers in moving away from heavy reliance on pesticides by reestablishing healthy ecosystems on their farms.
First, a word about policy goals.
The 1995-1996 Congressional session was dominated by an historic debate and struggle to agree on and adopt a way to balance the federal budget. The debate has focused on three key decisions:
By late fall last year the White House and Republicans in Congress had finally agreed that the goal should be a balanced budget in seven years, and that the budget agreement and its detailed components must collectively reach this goal. While disagreements over tax cuts and spending priorities have yet to be resolved, just agreeing on this goal and how progress toward it would be measured and monitored was a major step and was the focus of weeks of intense negotiations between the White House and Republican leaders in Congress.
Anyone trying to manage a budget, whether for a government agency, a local organization, or a family, knows that goals matter, as do accurate and honest numbers in keeping track of your checkbook, credit card debt and obligations, mortgages and retirement funds, and lest we forget where we are, federal income taxes, flat or otherwise.
Clear and measurable goals, and an honest, credible way to monitor progress is clearly also vital in the environmental policy arena. The Clean Air Act set goals for pollution levels and the number of days they could be exceeded. Various international agreements and protocols have set clear-cut goals and established timetables for achieving them, with more on the horizon.
Other encouraging examples can be drawn from industrial pollution prevention. Companies participating in EPA's voluntary "33/50" program have agreed to reduce their emissions of eighteen toxic chemicals over specified time periods. Many companies have far exceeded their original commitments.
Like most environmental and consumer groups concerned about pesticides, WWF applauded the Administration for making a commitment in June 1993 to promote pesticide reduction and sustainable agriculture. WWF took USDA's follow-up pledge to aim for adoption of integrated pest management on 75 percent of crop acreage by the year 2000 as an indication of the seriousness of the commitment. In the last two years we have worked with grower groups, government specialists, and other environmental organizations in an effort to help determine what this goal really means and to help foster agreement on constructive steps the USDA, EPA, and FDA can and should take toward achieving this goal. While we have a long way to go, WWF is encouraged by what we see as growing momentum toward IPM around the country--fueled in no small part by innovative farmers who are, in many respects, far ahead of policymakers and scientists in making IPM happen on their farms.
As WWF assessed USDA's and EPA's plans for working toward this goal, we and agricultural and environmental groups raised questions such as:
The case I want to make today is that it is in the best interest of the IPM community to more clearly delineate the environmental contributions of various kinds of IPM systems, to go public and indeed market these contributions, and to help target public and private sector resources towards IPM systems that minimize environmental impacts. Environmental and consumer organizations will be supportive of IPM to the extent that it results in improvement in environmental quality and public health.
How can you convince the public that IPM is addressing their concerns? You can define IPM more clearly, distinguishing between systems which still rely heavily on chemical pesticides and those that maximize the opportunities for adequate pest management existing in a well-balanced biological system. You can make a public commitment to moving as many producers in the direction of bio-intensive IPM systems as possible. You can propose ways of measuring individual and aggregate progress towards the kinds of IPM that rely less on hazardous pesticide products, and you can publicize data used in measuring progress.
What has been done so far to measure IPM adoption and distinguish between chemically-intensive and bio-intensive IPM?
[SLIDE 1 Cover of 1994 USDA Report "Adoption of Integrated Pest Management in U.S. Agriculture". Slides not included.]
In response to the many questions raised about President Clinton's IPM adoption goal, the USDA's Economic Research Service completed an innovative study on a very short timetable. The report used a simple methodology to estimate the number of acres of several major crops under no IPM and three levels of IPM: "low," "medium," and "high." Figure 1 presents our synthesis of USDA's findings.
In its 1994 study, USDA estimated IPM adoption for field crops, fruits and nuts, and vegetables. The nature of its estimates were constrained by the data it had available from the cropping practices surveys carried out from 1990 to 1993. All these surveys include detailed pesticide use data, but varying amounts of information (from almost none to considerable) on other pest management practices. USDA based IPM adoption principally on whether a field was scouted and sprayed in accordance with specified thresholds. Higher levels of adoption required the use of additional practices considered by USDA as "indicative of an IPM approach." Clearly, USDA's analysis was not comprehensive--nor did it claim to be.
What does the USDA study tell us about the starting point towards the 75 percent IPM goal? The Department did not add up its estimates of IPM adoption across categories of pests. But if they had, the numbers would have come out that roughly half of the acreage was under one of three levels of IPM:
There are a number of weaknesses with this methodology, readily acknowledged by USDA, that stem largely from lack of data.
First, and most important to the environmental and consumer communities, the data do not distinguish between practices that are related to "treatment" with chemical pesticides, and those that are "preventive," that is, based on altering the biological and ecological interactions between crops, pests, and beneficial organisms. Practices that constitute "treatment" with or contribute to the efficiency of pesticides are considered as "indicative of an IPM approach" by USDA's criteria, as are practices that draw upon and are most compatible with biological relationships on the farm.
In the interests of time, I won't go through this in detail, but let me give you an example. The five weed management practices referred to here are in fact required if herbicides are to be used. They are:
Only two of seven weed management practices included on USDA's list of "indicative of an IPM approach," crop rotations and mechanical cultivation, could help distinguish systems that remain heavily dependent on pesticides from those that are bio-intensive. The printed version of my remarks details the practices for the other major classes of pests and other cropping systems considered "indicative of an IPM approach." All include more practices essential to effective pesticide use than those integral to bio-intensive IPM.
WWF has developed a methodology for measuring pesticide reduction and adoption of IPM, as a strawman, which we think substantially improves on USDA'Ss initial study. It is on this methodology--and the conclusions we have drawn about the prevalence of IPM in the United States--that I would like to spend the rest of my time today.
WWF's experience with measurable goals used to drive pesticide reduction in other countries made us especially interested in the 1994 USDA report. As we discussed the basis of the Department's estimates with experts in the field and a wide range of stakeholders, we became convinced that more work was needed to come up with a measurement methodology truer to the ecological foundation of IPM. We were encouraged by the openness of USDA analysts in considering different approaches, and started a set of activities and analyses in early 1995, with the help of consultant Chuck Benbrook.
Our methodology evolved with each interaction we had with pest management specialists, in formal meetings we convened or casual conversations. For instance, Dr. Charles Mellinger, Technical Director of Glades Crop Care, a major independent crop consulting firm in Jupiter, Florida, explained that their fresh market tomato IPM program has at least 60 distinct "practices" or components, not all of which are needed every year, but which are relied upon sequentially as a function of what scouts observe in the field. Dr. Mellinger urged us to develop a methodology that takes into account the dynamic aspects of IPM; dynamic because of changing weather, pest pressure, markets, the emergence of resistance or secondary pests, or changes in technology.
I know Charlie is here, and feel confident in saying to him in response to his challenge: we are not there yet, but we are moving in the right direction. In designing our measurement methodology, WWF sought a system that can in fact be adapted to changing conditions and that can be stretched to accommodate the widely different pest management challenges found across the country.
Like the USDA continuum, WWF's IPM continuum has four zones. It shows how the criteria for IPM adoption change as you move along the spectrum, getting more complex and more biologically-oriented and prevention-focused.
At the core of our method for measuring adoption of IPM is a variable we call the "IPM System Ratio". The IPM ratio is composed of two variables: "dose-adjusted acre-treatments" (DAAT), and "preventive practice points" (PPP). The value for IPM System Ratio is calculated at the field/farm level, and equals PPP divided by DAAT. As farmers move along the IPM continuum toward bio-intensive IPM, they typically adopt additional prevention-based practices and/or as reliance on pesticides falls, IPM System Ratio values rise.
The DAAT variable is a way of taking into account the large differences in application rates between older and newer low-dose products, as well as the typical, rather than the full label or average, application rate of a given product. It is a spatial measure that adds up the number of active ingredient applications made with a specified rate of application. The IPM preventive practices variable is the sum of biologically and ecologically based practices that either reduce pest pressure, increase the number and role of beneficial organisms, or enhance a crop's ability to overcome a degree of pest pressure.
The differences in approaches between USDA's study and our strawman methodology include:
WWF's first detailed empirical application of this methodology was carried out by our consultant Chuck Benbrook, and assessed integrated weed management systems on corn and soybean farms in 1994. Some of the results of Chuck's study are presented in his poster, which can be found in the Poster Hall. Earlier this month, Chuck presented the method and preliminary results at a workshop at the WSSA annual meeting in Norfolk, Virginia. He received positive feedback from many researchers, some of whom have offered to work with us in applying the method in their state. To those here today, let me add we would welcome a chance to collaborate with IPM research teams, commodity groups, consultants, regional based coops and marketing companies, and others working to develop ways to measure IPM adoption and quantify the public health, economic, and environmental quality benefits of IPM.
[According to USDA's criteria, 57 percent of soybean acreage was managed under "medium" or "high" IPM (based on the 1993 cropping practices survey database). WWF has studied the 1994 cropping practices survey. According to our criteria about 36 percent was managed under "medium" and "high" levels of IPM--and only six percent of that was under bio-intensive integrated weed management. In both soybeans and corn, our methodology results in far fewer acres in the high zone than does the USDA methodology. An example of the our empirical findings in the case of use and reliance on atrazine, a major problem-pesticide, follows in Figure 2.
What do we do with these data once we have them? That depends on who is using them. Together, soybean growers, crop consultants and extension personnel could assess whether it is technically feasible for the growers in the low zone to move to the medium zone (e.g., whether or not differences in levels of IPM adoption stem from a pest outbreak specific to a particular region, weather, or other factors beyond a grower's control). They could set goals for percentages of soybean growers moving into higher zones, and develop programs to achieve those goals. Growers of food products could consider developing a label describing practices of growers in the high zone, aiming for a premium price.
Our next step with these data was to further explore growers' reliance on pesticides in the different zones. As I noted earlier, reducing the use of pesticides is a top priority for environmental and consumer groups, and we think the ability to point to reduced reliance and risk is an important asset for practitioners and policymakers promoting IPM. We propose seven indicators of pesticide reliance, also detailed in the longer version of my presentation.
Based on our preliminary work, we have made a rough estimate of baseline IPM adoption in 1992-1994, which follows as Figure 3 "WWF Estimate of the Percent of Harvested Acreage by Levels of IPM Adoption: 1991-1993 Baseline". The figure includes ranges, reflecting the fact we have not completed our analysis. But based on the differences between our method and USDA's method, we feel confident the calculated values will fall within the ranges presented here.
So what do these data suggest about the president's 75 percent goal?
The president set a goal of 75 percent IPM adoption by the year 2000. Based on USDA's decision-rule--that any acre scouted and sprayed in accordance with a threshold counts as at least "low" level IPM--certainly at least 50 percent of the nation's cultivated acreage is under IPM. In fact, using USDA's definition, many more acres may be in IPM, as USDA did not count acreage under organic or other biologically-based production system that doesn't involve the spraying of pesticides, nor acreage where there is very little pest pressure (since producers did not necessarily spray in accordance with a threshold), nor acreage for which there are no applicable thresholds. In contrast, using our definition, anywhere from 30 to 43 percent is already in the "medium" and "high" zones of IPM. The biggest difference between USDA's and WWF's estimates is in the "high" zone: WWF estimates five to eight percent and USDA estimates 20 to 30 percent.
The president chose wisely in setting a goal of 75 percent IPM adoption. But to say that we are "almost there" is to say that we are not moving much beyond the status quo of pest management that relies heavily, though efficiently, on pesticides. We suggest that it is ambitious but doable to aim for 75 percent of crop acreage in the "high" or "medium" zones of IPM for all major categories of pests requiring routine pesticide use. It will clearly take longer than three more years to achieve this goal, and progress will remain incremental as growers move along the IPM continuum.
Clearly, there is much work to be done to move from our current estimate of IPM adoption (a little more than a third of acreage in the "medium" and "high" zones) to reach 75 percent of acreage in these zones, the president's goal as WWF interprets it. We think the nation will require at least 10 years to achieve this goal, but that it not only can be done, it must be done to reverse troubling trends in public health risks and environmental contamination.
We base our confidence in large part on the rapidly growing enthusiasm for farmer- led participatory research, which gets scientists out into the field to do systems- based research in the best lab of all for solving pest management problems: the real world. We also are encouraged by the number and effectiveness of reduced risk biopesticides gaining registration by EPA, as well as the positive results many growers are achieving through the release of beneficial organisms. Over time as farmers move closer to bio-intensive IPM and as biodiversity is restored both above and below the ground, new products and approaches will become more useful, helping to keep pest populations under control in those years when biological processes do not fully meet the challenge, as they sometimes won't--just as today's pesticide-dependent systems are far from fail-safe.
Adding risk to the equation is a final, key--and difficult--step in linking IPM adoption to reduced public health and environmental risks. Four major categories of pesticide toxicity must be assessed--acute mammalian toxicity, chronic mammalian toxicity, ecotoxicity, and impacts on cropping system sustainability and beneficial organisms. Risk indicator index values can be used to estimate the environmental and/or health consequences of pesticide use measured by pounds applied and/or dose-adjusted acre treatments, by crop or region, by pest management system, and over time. Since adoption of bio-intensive IPM requires enhancing biodiversity and beneficial populations, farmers have to make a special commitment to reducing the use of broadly toxic, ecologically-disruptive pesticides. The positive consequences of change in the selection of active ingredients will be captured more fully when measures of pesticide reliance and use are adjusted in accordance with toxicity indexes.
To conclude, across the United States and elsewhere in the world, the train is out of the station in terms of public concern--at least three more major reports and books on risks from synthetic chemicals will be published between now and June--and in terms of growers and processors marketing their produce as "green", "clean," and "better." Its time to agree on ambitious, measurable goals and get on with attaining them, a process which will be far more successful if all communities supporting progress along the IPM continuum can work together to convince an always skeptical Congress that IPM is the way to go. Figure 4 presents both our IPM adoption baseline estimate in 1991-1993, and our goals for 2010.
We are certain American farmers are eager to move in this direction and that the nation's pest management professionals are ready to help accelerate progress along the IPM continuum. We hope USDA, EPA, and agribusiness will work cooperatively to find more effective ways to use the current level of public and private resources invested in pest management and pesticide safety research and regulation. As a nation, we may be better off by spending less time studying and arguing over pesticide risks, and more on overcoming the many real technical, informational, and economic barriers to progress toward bio-intensive IPM.
Cooperative approaches will accomplish far more than the last decade's still- unresolved debate over reforms to the Delaney Clause, enlivened periodically by the pesticide-of-the-month syndrome. The increasingly contentious nature of pesticide and pest management policy issues in the United States has poorly served both farmers and the general public. It has divided those who need to work together to craft and support changes in policy and in research and education funding priorities. Such changes are essential to assure that attainment of the president's IPM goal is both realistic and worth doing.
Thank you for your attention.
