Iowa State University Integrated Pest Management Field Guide Project: Evaluation of Materials and Resources
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Abstract
A central goal of integrated pest management (IPM) is to reduce the unnecessary use of pesticides. For Iowa growers, IPM can improve the economic and environmental performance of corn and soybean production. A successful IPM system begins with correctly identifying pests and disease, then understanding the biophysical relationships between them and the crops they attack. The Iowa State University (ISU) Corn and Soybean Initiative staff in collaboration with ISU faculty and staff in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and ISU Extension has developed four field guides—one specific to corn and three to soybean—to aid pest and disease identification in the field. The ISU soybean and corn field guides were developed for widespread distribution in Iowa and neighboring states. These guides are meant to be convenient, basic references for teaching the principles of IPM for the two most widely grown crops in Iowa. The Corn and Soybean Initiative has disseminated over 250,000 guides to growers, crop advisers, agribusiness professionals, and agricultural educators as a resource to support IPM-based management decisions. For growers and crop advisers, the guides are meant to improve the ability to scout pests and make decisions in the field. For educators, the Corn and Soybean Initiative staff developed PowerPoint modules that illustrate general IPM principles and facilitate the teaching of IPM in the classroom. In fall 2009, the Corn and Soybean Initiative received a grant from the Iowa Resource Enhancement and Protection (REAP) Conservation Education Program (CEP) to 1) develop IPM learning modules for use in agricultural education classrooms, 2) distribute the field guides and modules to agricultural educators across Iowa, and 3) evaluate the effectiveness and utility of those resources and collect feedback on ways that they might be improved. Two web-based surveys were conducted, one of crop advisers and agribusiness professionals and one of agricultural educators. Both surveys were conducted in spring 2010. This report presents the results of those surveys. The report consists of three sections. This introductory section provides background information on the field guide project, including the rationale for the development of the field guides and modules and the objectives of the evaluation project. The second section consists of two stand-alone summaries of the evaluation findings. These two-page documents were developed to be concise summaries of survey findings appropriate for wide dissemination. The final section contains the full tabulation of the quantitative data collected through the surveys.