Madison -- A collaboration between a Wisconsin growers group and an international environmental organization has earned a major environmental award while reducing pesticide use on some of the state's most sensitive cropland.

This week the Wisconsin Potato and Vegetable Growers Association was honored by the World Wildlife Fund for its ambitious initiative aimed at reducing the use of chemicals on its crops. The environmental group honored the grower's initiative in its Living Planet Campaign with a "Gift to the Earth" award -- on normally accorded to governments of countries for their efforts at habitat protection and similar large-scale environmental efforts.

Dean Zuleger, now executive vice president with Bob Pavelski's Heartland Farms, was until recently the executive director of the Wisconsin Potato and Vegetable Growers Association. HE was instrumental in starting the collaboration with the World Wildlife Fund in 1995 and working with growers to meet pesticide reduction goals.

"This is the first time this award was given to an agricultural group in the world," he said of the Monday (June 15) ceremony in Madison. "I don't mind telling you I got a little teary-eyed when they gave that award to us."

Zuleger said the project grew out of a Great Lakes water quality conference sponsored by the S.E. Johnson Co. where he began talking with members of the World Wildlife Fund. He and Polly Hoppin of the WWF began talking about putting the collaboration together after both of their groups participated in an integrated pest management conference.

The fact that many of his grower-members were already "reductions in their hearts" along with the rational way WWF approached the concept of pest management were integral parts of what made the project possible, Zuleger said.

"You go to meeting in Wisconsin and so many environmental groups are there to be adversarial. But in this case World Wildlife Fund really wants to do what's best for the earth -- they have that in their heart. They are real true to their mission," he said.

"Some people want to fight and these folks don't," he said. "They understand that you need to have suppression tools to grow a food crop."

Zuleger said the state's potato and vegetable growers have worked for years to try to preserve their soils and cut down on chemicals. This project brought those efforts to the forefront with the "right mix of people" he said, crediting Hoppin's successor at the WWF, Sarah Lynch, with continuing the effort as the environmental group's Director of Agricultural Pollution Prevention.

At the press conference Monday the two groups announced that state potato and vegetable growers have voluntarily cut their use of 11 high-risk pesticides by 25 percent in the first two years of the program.

The WWF boiled the measurements for the various chemicals down to "toxicity units" based on the potential for human health and ecological hazard. Zuleger said his growers had reduced the number of toxicity units a stunning 61 percent in the insecticide category.

During the same growing seasons, national toxicity units for insecticides rose six percent according to the WWF.

Among fungicides used by Wisconsin growers, the reduction was a more modest four percent, but that wsa in a climate of increased pressure from fungal blight diseases said Zuleger. Given the pressure of late blight, even that amount of reduction is good news, he said.

According to the WWF, the effort of the Wisconsin growers contrasts sharply with outer major potato-growing regions of the country where pesticide toxicity units overall rose 16 percent over the same period. They base their clams on USDA pesticide use data released May 20 covering the 1995-1997 crop years.

The "toxicity unit" measurement was an attempt by the environmental group to bring to a common denominator the various agricultural chemicals that are used in a variety of rates, means and methods. It also is a way of combining the various categories of fungicides, insecticides and herbicides.

The Wisconsin Potato and Vegetable Growers Association has 250 members who grow about 80,000 acres of potatoes each year. Zuleger said the initiative with WWF found its way to his growers through an aggressive series of grower education meetings, field days, magazine articles, and the association's Web page.

The growers hope that the collaboration will not only bring them a better environment and habitat on their land, but perhaps a bump in the market by being "friendly to the earth" Zuleger said.

Part of the goal for the program is that WWF will help promote Wisconsin fresh potatoes for the approach their producers have taken toward pesticide reduction.

The WWF hopes that the consuming public will seek out products that are certified by credible sources as "environmentally friendly." They hope that the Wisconsin potato growers who have earned the "gift to the earth" award will also earn a bit more marketplace recognition for their environmental stewardship.

Monday's press conference was attended by Wisconsin Agriculture Secretary Ben Brancel, the state secretary of the Department of Natural Resources, George Meyer, as well as officials from the WWF and WPVGA and the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

World Wildlife Fund leaders said they plan to hold up the program with Wisconsin's potato growers as a model of how shcu a collaboration can work between groups that are widely thought to be adversarial. It will be used as a model of how such a program can work in this country and in Europe.

There was special recognition for the participation of scientists from the University of Wisconsin at Monday's press conference, as well as the participation of UW-Extension service in getting the word out to growers.