Recently, our industry partners, the National Grape Cooperative and the Michigan Grape and Wine Industry Council, suggested a collaboration that will further enhance the usefulness of the new guide. We will be working with the Michigan Agriculture Environmental Assurance Program (MAEAP) to ensure their environmental risk assessment products and the IPM grape grower guide work together.  Growers will be able to step through the MAEAP assessment tool to identify relative risks in their operations and then step through the IPM guide to evaluate their options to reduce risk while maintaining the high quality pest management needed in this industry. The site-specific grower guides will be helpful in fulfilling the options and requirements of state and USDA programs such as MAEAP and NRCS conservation programs. We envision the grape guide will serve as a template for other commodities and crop management tactics.
                                                                                        
We thank the grape growers and industry for their voice in developing this new tool for IPM planning, and also Project GREEEN for its sponsorship.

The $1.6 million Tart Cherry Integrated Orchard Management project funded through USDA’s Risk Avoidance Mitigation Program (RAMP) completed its fourth and final field season in 2007. The project team has succeeded in securing a second RAMP grant funded at $1.5 million to continue its work of helping the cherry industry transition to OP-alternatives and reduced-risk controls to manage key pests, develop resistance management strategies, investigate cherry tree host plant resistance, and to develop reliable measures of the ecological consequences of orchard management changes.

According to the project manager, IPM integrator David Epstein, the funding of a second RAMP project immediately following the original is unusual and is a powerful testimony to the effectiveness of the partnership between the cherry industry and researchers at Michigan State University, Utah and Wisconsin. Lead project investigator Mark Whalon reports that the project’s findings were instrumental in USEPA’s decision to give the tart cherry industry an extension until 2012 to transition away from AZM to a more workable OP-alternative IPM program. The funding provided for the second RAMP through September 2010 will support continued collaboration in best methods to structure cherry pest management programs of the near future.

Read the 2008 report from the first RAMP at: http://www.ipm.msu.edu/tartcherry.htm

Here in Michigan, the momentum continues as more growers use the USDA conservation program EQIP to assist them in implementing conservation-focused IPM. There has been a 15-fold increase in funds devoted to IPM implementation statewide from 2002 ($75,000) to 2007 ($1.15 million). Growers are implementing a number of IPM tactics from adding sensing technology and shields to sprayers, to utilizing reduced-risk pesticides. A new 2007 report detailing activities in Michigan is linked at: www.ipm.msu.edu/farmbill.htm. We’d like to give special thanks to all that have contributed to the project, including Michigan NRCS for recognizing IPM as a joint resource conservation and plant protection tool. These partners are listed in the acknowledgements of at the end of the report.

Regionally, beginning in fall 2006, MSU IPM Coordinator Mike Brewer worked with the IPM Institute of North America’s Tom Green to setup a regional work group on conservation programs and IPM party sponsored by the North Central IPM Center. The work group brings together university IPM staffs with NRCS staff in the north central states to identify means to increase adoption of IPM through NRCS conservation programs. The work group first met in November 2006 and has continued its interactions via conference calls in 2007. States like Michigan and Wisconsin that have been building collaborations with NRCS share their experiences for potential adaptation by the other states. The work group has developed state and regional aids for learning about EQIP and how to participate which are accessible at a website hosted by the MSU IPM Program at: www.ipm.msu.edu/work-group/home.htm. You are welcome to redistribute and reprint any of this information.

The IPM Program has hosted a web site since 1996. The newest efforts in 2007 included:

• Joining with the Fruit Area of Expertise Team and Project GREEEN to develop web sites for cherry and apple growers. These are being initiated at cherries.msu.edu and apples.msu.ed
• Building six web sites based on the content of six IPM scouting guides.
• Updating the Michigan web site about EQIP and its incentives for adopting IPM.
• Initiating a regional web site with multi-state information about EQIP and IPM.
• Adding information and teaching tools about bees and pollination to the website Enhancing Beneficial Insects with Native Plants. There were over 4,000 downloads of the five teaching tools during August to December 2007.
• Building more background information at the IPM Resources web for linking to pest models at Enviro-weather.
• We also continued publishing newsletters including five editions of the Crop Advisory Team Alerts and the New Agriculture Network – a total of 92 issues.
  

The IPM Program has learned something new about the news media: They can’t resist a project that involves little pigs keeping worms out of the all-American apple. In 2006, apple grower Jim Koan asked IPM integrator Dave Epstein to help him explore grazing pigs in his organic apple block to eat fallen apples that harbor plum curculio larvae. Dave, with pork specialist Dale Rozeboom, is researching this innovative approach to managing an apple pest while producing organic bacon. “We’ve only had one season for testing our hypothesis,” notes Epstein. “It was pretty successful, but we certainly aren’t ready to tell the world to put pigs in every orchard.”

The Michigan press got wind of the research and enjoyed farmer Jim Koan’s colorful way of talking about the work. The Associated Press picked up the story and within a couple of days, it was spanning the globe with web postings by Newsweek, the Seattle Times, Australia’s Sydney Morning Herald and hundreds of thousands of others. Google “Hogs help battle beetle” to view some of these stories.

Listen to the NPR interview with Dave Epstein and Jim Koan about their project. You must have Windows Media Player to listen. To download, click here.

Epstein says he doesn't’t consider it the most important work he’s ever done, but there must be something about pigs! Thanks to the USDA Integrated Organic Program for initially funding this work.The pigs are just one of several projects from 2007 that we covered in our fall newsletter. In that newsletter, you can also read about:

• New agro-ecology book looks at farming systems
• Enviro-weather helps apple growers with fire blight
• Growing native plants to enhance beneficial insects
• Trap crops and polyculture as management tools
  
• Whole farm management of codling moth.

I’m pleased to join MSU as the new Small Fruit Education Coordinator. My position, which began January 1, 2008, is housed in the MSU IPM Program. I have statewide responsibilities for coordinating extension and applied research efforts to address the pest and production priorities of Michigan’s small fruit industries (e.g. grapes, blueberries). My focus will be to support small fruit commodity organizations, MSU extension educators, and MSU researchers in developing, producing and delivering outreach programming. I will also facilitate communications and collaborations between MSU researchers, county/district extension educators, industry partners, growers and related clientele. My appointment is 75 percent outreach and 25 percent research with half the funding coming from the MSU College of Agriculture and Natural Resources and the rest from extramural resources.