The Wisconsin Potato and Vegetable Growers Association (WPVGA) has announced it will work with the environmental group World Wildlife Fund in promoting intensive use of IPM among its members. This is no innocent, wide-eyed endeavor, either. WPVGA executive director Dean Zulegar acknowledges the financial risk to his members of such an endeavor -- including potential loss of loans from bankers skittish about potential crop losses. Zulegar hopes his membership will straddle a fine line between risking a trip to the poorhouse and helping to clean up the Great Lakes.

What's especially remarkable about this is that the seemingly unassailable wall between agriculture and urbanites is, if not exactly being torn down, at least being breached. Increasingly, farmers and the industries that serve them no longer necessarily view environmentalists and regulatory agencies as de facto adversaries. In fact, sometimes they're concluding they have much in common with them, and are discovering the benefits of working with them rather than against them.

At the recent annual meeting of the Southern Crop Protection Association, industry keynote speaker Hans Loose of BASF Corp. underscored this change by predicting increased emphasis on IPM and more cooperation between agriculture and EPA. "There's been a very big shift from the confrontation of 10 years ago," he said. Loose, for one, foresees a lofty goal for U.S. farming in the 21st century; Sandwiched between expanding environmental movements worldwide, a desire for safe food, and a need to feed an hungry, growing planet, U.S. agriculture must focus on "optimization of economic, ecological, and social goals."

That's a hefty challenge -- and one that, frankly, many environmentalist critics of U.S. farming probably would be startled to hear agriculture and agribusiness is even making at all. But then again, shifts in perception can work both ways.

To be sure, crop protection chemicals -- even with the tidal wave of changes in agriculture -- likely will continue as the terra firma of pest control for some time. But the delineation between the "good guys" and the "bad guys" may not be quite as clear-cut as in the past. And no matter where any of us stands on the issue of IPM and biological controls -- and that includes those in the environmental and regulatory communities as well as those of us in agriculture -- the ground beneath all of us probably will continue to shake as we near the next millennium, regardless of whether we feel the tremors....