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About Us
County Impact Statements - Drew County
Integrated Pest Management Practices Help Producers And The
Environment
Arkansas producers are facing historically low commodity prices and
deteriorating financial positions. Pest control in row crops, whether insects,
weeds or diseases, is one of the highest input costs in farming. Integrated Pest
Management (IPM) is a system that uses cultural, mechanical, biological and
chemical control measures and allows a farmer to evaluate a certain pest or
pests and then choose the appropriate control measure. Pest identification,
population estimation, economic treatment threshold, and growth stage are all
utilized in an IPM program to determine the cheapest and best way to control a
pest, thus lowering input costs.
Programs conducted in Drew County that facilitate the use of IPM included:
Cotton Moth Trapping Program - to assist in giving an estimate in the population
percentage of cotton bollworms and budworms, Cotton Aphid Testing - to determine
the presence of a naturally occurring fungus in local aphids, thus eliminating
unnecessary insecticide treatments, COTMAN demonstration - to assist farmers in
deciding when to stop insecticide applications for cotton, Stinkbug Control
demonstrations - to evaluate the efficacy of different insecticides in
controlling stinkbugs so that producers could use the best chemical, Cotton
Ovicide demonstration - to evaluate the efficacy of different insecticides in
killing bollworms and budworms in their egg stage, thus eliminating the need to
apply more expensive insecticides to kill the adult pests. Weekly IPM meetings
were also held during the growing season to inform producers and consultants of
local problems and solutions relating to pest control.
Extension workers use sweep-nets to determine rice stinkbug
populations in Drew County rice producer Minter Appleberry’s
field
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Impacts
- Producers involved in COTMAN demonstrations saved approximately $20 per
acre on insecticide costs by knowing when to stop spraying.
- Rice producers saved $6/acre by using insecticides with a longer
residual control, because fields did not have to be treated again.
- Cotton producers saved $8/acre by not treating aphid infested fields
when it was determined that the pest would be naturally eliminated by the
presence of a fungus.
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