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IPM Labeling - February 1998
February 24, 1998
An exciting evolutionary step is taking place in Integrated Pest Management (IPM): the private sector is realizing there may be a market advantage in embracing the idea of IPM. Due to the public’s increasing concern about how our food is grown, the impact of farming on the environment, and the marketing approaches of grocery store chains such as Wegmans, the private sector is asking for the public institutions’ cooperation in the development of IPM programs.
IPM began more than 25 years ago, when environmental issues began receiving more attention. Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring was published a few years previously, the Environmental Protection Agency was newly established and pest scientists were realizing that the emerging field of ecology could be used to manage agricultural systems. With this public mandate and a new set of management tools, scientists and extensionists from land grant universities and other institutions began to teach and demonstrate IPM.
Today, there is a renewed concern by the public about the safety of food and the impact of agriculture on the environment. The ALAR incident is one such example of this. The anger of the public was so great over the report of human toxicity for a commonly used agricultural chemical that catastrophe resulted for apple growers who could not sell their fruit.
Regardless of the facts or the actual, calculable risk of these types of highly publicized situations, the public is demanding a more "green" response from government and industry. For example, experiments conducted with university students in the Netherlands in 1993 indicate consumers prefer products with green labels and are willing to pay a modest price premium for them. The hope is that increased consumer demand for green-labeled products will be an important incentive for Dutch farmers to adopt more sustainable agricultural practices -- which in turn would help them meet pesticide reduction targets.
In Wisconsin, vegetable and potato growers have teamed up with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) to advance IPM in the Midwest. Growers and the WWF are working together to reduce pest pressure and establish a good ecological balance in order to reduce the need for pesticides. The growers are using the WWF Panda logo, fourth most-recognized logo in the word, on their packaging to identify produce grown under the IPM program.
In other IPM efforts, Wegmans Supermarkets, a regional supermarket chain with stores in New York and Pennsylvania, is taking the initiative with green-labeling. Wegmans is marketing a growing line of products that assures the consumer that crops contained in these products are grown, processed and stored under a strict IPM program. The supermarket chain approached one of its processors, Comstock, Inc. of Michigan, and the New York IPM Program to help design the implementation procedure. Under this program, guidelines for growing several products including sweet corn, canned corn, peas, beans, carrots, beets and kraut cabbage were developed. One of Wegmans demands is that IPM procedures be approved by the land grant institution in the state where the crop is grown, so the Pennsylvania IPM Program was asked to participate in early 1997.
The Pennsylvania IPM Program is currently responding to local industry to help them meet the new market demand for IPM products. For instance, we were approached by Furman Foods, a family-owned vegetable processing company near Lewisburg, Pa. that supplies canned tomatoes to Wegmans. Furman and the farmers that supply tomatoes to Furman needed to comply with IPM labeling requirements or lose Wegmans as a customer. In response to this need, the Pennsylvania IPM Program met with officials from Furman and Wegmans to determine the needs of each company.
IPM coordinators representing farmers from New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania then attended a conference in Hershey, Pa. to agree on the elements of a processing tomato IPM program. Along with the specialist, representatives form Furman and Wegmans, crop consultants and Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture plant inspection personnel attended.
The initial IPM "elements" drafted included such practices as buying disease free seeds, land preparation techniques, tomato variety selection, weed management strategies, crop monitoring and strict record-keeping practices. In order for a farmer to comply, he or she must adopt enough of the practice elements to satisfy an agreed upon rating system. Farm activity records are sent weekly to Furman while their field technicians monitor IPM activities on the farm. At the end of the season all records are verified by an independent auditor. This system of checks and balances maintains high quality IPM practices and a high rate of compliance.
The Pennsylvania IPM program is ready to meet the challenge posed by the private sector’s demand for IPM services. We feel that this will provide the self generating momentum that is needed to sustain and improve IPM programming into the future. This type of collaboration will also generate good will between the industry, the universities and the state government, provide opportunities for IPM research and education, and sensitize consumers to the advantages of IPM. Wegmans already has indications that the IPM-labelled products are attractive to consumers and sales look promising. We in the Pennsylvania IPM Program can only look forward to similar requests from other food retailers and processors in the state as Wegmans realizes its competitive advantage. The Pennsylvania IPM Program needs to be ready to fulfill this need that will spur IPM adoption to new heights.
Wegmans Website: www.wegmans.com/