FRI, SEP 20 2024
21:43:39
- Author: Mark Bolda
Published on: March 24, 2010
Readers of this blog may be aware that as of yesterday, the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) has declared that eradication of the light brown apple moth "is not viewed as feasible" and thus will shift focus to a policy of control instead. Formally, this means that regulatory efforts in the Bay Area under quarantine will now be containment rather than eradication. Other smaller areas of infestation, such as for example Davis, are still under a regime of eradication.
http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/localnews/ci_14745923
http://www.cdfa.ca.gov/phpps/PDEP/lbam/envimpactrpt.html
What does this mean for growers? Simply put, while the goal of the CDFA and USDA may have gone from eradication to containment, the threshold for regulatory action is still the positive identification of one light brown apple moth larva in a production field. Therefore it is imperative for growers in the area under quarantine DO NOT waver in their efforts to control leafrollers in their crops. Any sign of leafroller activity in their crops is still a signal to act.
I sat in the Sacramento Senator Florez hearing Tuesday and also read the certification document for this moth eradication/control program.
The top agriculture scientists in the country related to this moth were in the room and heavy weight professors AND FARMERS. It was intense.
The indisputable evidence that came out of this hearing is:
1. The moth has done NO crop damage in California. All reports of LBAM damage were false and fabricated (or wrongly claimed) by the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA).
2. There is only one in a billion chance that the moth arrived as recently as 2006. Almost certainly the moth has been in California for closer to 50 years. Together with NO damage, this means the Light Brown Apple Moth (LBAM) is NOT a threat in California to crops any more than many other similar native moths that farmers handle along with thousands of insects they farm amongst.
3. The Point of #1 and #2 above being: a state program of any kind for this moth is inappropriate, not needed and a huge waste of our money.
APHIS (department of USDA) will never voluntarily reclassify the moth to its appropriate status because that would stop the taxpayer money flowing to this program. APHIS has received the correct information on this moth, and APHIS knows the truth ten times over. But APHIS and CDFA will conclude by maintaining the fraud and saying their "Experts" think the moth is dangerous.
We will never actually hear or see their experts and they will never allow their "Experts" to meet with the top agriculture scientists in the state who have said for three years now that the moth is a non-issue. APHIS and CDFA don't even have experts who can support their faked science. But APHIS & CDFA management will continue to say anything that generates fear and keeps the $Millions flowing. Yet CDFA is so cheap, besides forcing farmers to use unnecessary expensive pesticides, they also force the farmer to pay for them. Only the large corporate privileged insider chemical companies get the big money, nothing for farmers.
It would be far more appropriate if these top management persons at CDFA and USDA say these things from their cells in prison, where they belong.
It is quite clear that you have a strong opinion regarding LBAM and the program related to its control and so far I have not made an issue of you using this forum to share this. Be that at it may, the purpose of this blog is not to engage in polemics regarding LBAM. The purpose of this blog is, as an extension tool, to simply to inform and remind growers that they must continue a rigourous program of leafroller management in their fields to lessen the risk of costly regulatory action.
I am curious to know how the recommendation to farmers to "control leafrollers in their crops" is consistent with principles of IPM. Leafrollers do little or no damage and are important sources of food for other species, such as spiders, that are in turn important elements of an integrated pest management regime. It appears that you are recommending that farmers eliminate all leafrollers, including native ones, which seems counterproductive in an IPM approach. I understand the regulatory issue and the potentially devastating effect on a farmer if inspectors find a leafroller and then spend weeks testing to determine whether it is LBAM, which was explained at last Tuesday's state Senate Hearing on the LBAM program. But the problem in that situation does not seem to be the leafrollers but rather the way the agriculture agency is "policing" farmers, including the slowness with which inspectors evidently determine the identity of larvae, and the lack of common sense about the fact that native leafrollers are far more common than the apple moth and that an organic field or one managed using IPM is in fact healthy if leafrollers are present. Agriculture agencies appear to be working in contradiction to their mandate to protect farmers and agriculture in making recommendations such as this one to manage leafrollers to avoid problems with inspectors rather than to manage their fields to be healthy and maintain a natural balance so that pesticides are not needed.
To clarify, the role of UC Cooperative Extension is to assist growers in finding solutions to challenges they face in their operations. In other words, we don't make the rules created by nature or people, but rather our mission is to help growers in dealing with them.
In the current regulatory climate regarding LBAM, the rules are that growers do not have a single LBAM larva detected in their fields. In the light of such a low threshold for action, growers must necessarily be more aggressive than they normally would be in a program of integrated pest management.