New Roadmap for Pest Management Offers Familiar Route, Fresh Opportunities for Organic Growers

A new “roadmap” from the State of California encourages broad adoption of Sustainable Pest Management (SPM), providing a unique leadership opportunity for organic growers, said panelists during the Roadmap to a Sustainable Pest Management Future for Organics ed session at the Organic Grower Summit, held November 29 and 30 in Monterey, California.

The Sustainable Pest Management Roadmap is a new project from the California Department of Pesticide Regulation (DPR). The Roadmap was published earlier this year from a cross-sector work group that included representatives from production agriculture, farmworkers, tribes, the pest control sector, academia, and public health. The overall goal of the initiative is to make “SPM the de facto approach to managing pests in agricultural and urban environments in California by 2050.”

Gina Bella Colfer, Sustainable Solutions PCA/CCA, Wilbur Ellis

But organic growers have already adopted many of these SPM strategies, said Gina Bella Colfer, sustainable solutions PCA/CCA at Wilbur Ellis. “We’re doing it already and trying to manage in a more holistic approach,” she said. “The organic community is in a really unique position to be leaders and educators and help facilitate that transition away from broad-spectrum chemistries.”

“The organic community is in a really unique position to be leaders and educators and help facilitate that transition away from broad-spectrum chemistries." - Gina Bella Colfer

“Our conventional colleagues will suddenly be faced with things that the organic sector has been dealing with for 50 years,” said Matthew Grieshop, director of the Cal Poly Grimm Family Center for Organic Production and Research. “When you take away these tools, the systems have to change.”

Matthew Grieshop, Director, Cal Poly Grimm Family Center for Organic Production and Research

Kim Horton, agronomy manager at Taylor Farms, emphasized the role of healthy soils as foundational to SPM. Horton encouraged discipline around applying appropriate biologicals at the right time and said growers should analyze plant tissue and the soil microbiome.

“Organic produce is held to the same standard as conventional. So we often have to think outside the box for ways to suppress pests and produce the healthiest crops,” Horton said. “Having balanced plants means you will have less pest pressure.”

Kim Horton, Agronomy Manager, Taylor Farms

Part of the holistic pest management approach championed by SPM includes developing natural biodiversity, said Jo Ann Baumgartner, executive director of Wild Farm Alliance. 

Growers with a simplified farm ecosystem, like a bare ditch, do not provide enough fuel for the natural cycles of the beneficial birds and insects that help with pest control. When these cycles break, pests begin to overwhelm crops. A diverse farm ecosystem supports native species with owl boxes or beneficial insect releases that work together to reduce pest pressure, said Baumgartner. 

“It needs to be a holistic framework. Nature abhors a vacuum,” said Baumgartner. “If we ignore that, it’s at our own peril.”

Jo Ann Baumgartner, Executive Director, Wild Farm Alliance

Pressure from the Roadmap may help frame SPM as a risk analysis question for growers as they weigh balancing cash crops with habitat maintenance, said Grieshop. “I really believe that we need to start thinking economically to support biocontrol and pollination services in fields,” he said. “It’s an understanding that if you plant everything to your cash crop, you’re going to have bigger losses.”