Breakfast meetings spread word on farm pests

Several times each spring, farmers can get a hearty breakfast and the latest advice on how to manage pests in Stanislaus County.

The University of California Cooperative Extension holds the 7 a.m. meetings, most recently at the Old Mill Cafe in Modesto, to spread the word about insects and diseases affecting tree and vine crops.

“We pass a lot of things around, like vials with insects in them,” said farm adviser Kathleen Kelley Anderson, who organizes the meetings with colleague Roger Duncan. Farmers pay for their meals but get free information on threats to their fruits and nuts.

The 20-year-old program received an IPM Innovator Award late last month from the California Department of Pesticide Regulation. The acronym stands for integrated pest management, which uses population monitoring, natural predators and other alternatives to simply spraying chemicals.

The annual awards recognize people who “put a lot of time and effort into pest prevention techniques that can reduce the use of pesticides,” said Tom Babb, environmental program manager at the department, in a news release.

IPM has developed over the past few decades amid concerns that excessive pesticide use could poison people and disrupt natural systems that had kept pests in check.

Many farmers used to do preventive spraying on a schedule, but now they keep track of the pest numbers and spray only if crops are threatened. Another practice – planting diverse vegetation between the rows and beside the fields – can provide habitat for good bugs that prey on bad bugs.

Farmers also can disrupt pest mating by releasing synthetic versions of the pheromones that males and females use to communicate. And navel orangeworms, a major threat to almonds and walnuts, have fewer places to lay their eggs if growers leave no nuts on the ground after harvest.

The Tree & Vine IPM Breakfast Group, as it’s known, meets on the first and third Wednesdays of each month from March through June. The 40 or so attendees include pest control advisers, who are licensed by the state, along with growers and guest speakers.

“The idea is that we can put the alarm out that we have this disease or this insect that’s starting to show in one area of the county,” Duncan said.

Art Bowman, a pest control adviser at Salida Ag Chemical, has attended the meetings from the start. He said they provide information on pest levels, “soft” alternatives to harsher pesticides, and the proper time to spray.

“We can’t just say we’ll spray May 1,” said Bowman, who also is an almond grower.

Anderson, who has been with the office for 33 years, specializes in walnuts, apricots, apples and cherries. Duncan has handled almonds, peaches, grapes and miscellaneous tree fruit over his 21 years there.

Both have the master’s degrees required to be a farm adviser. Anderson earned hers in pomology – aka fruit cultivation – from UC Davis. Duncan got his in plant science at California State University, Fresno.

Other winners of the IPM award last week were the California Invasive Plant Council, based in Berkeley; Four Winds Growers, a citrus nursery in Watsonville; and Sustainabililty in Practice Certified, a program near San Luis Obispo that helps grape growers deal with pests.

This story was originally published February 7, 2016 at 3:44 PM with the headline "Breakfast meetings spread word on farm pests."