Michigan State University #IPM50

For more information on IPM in the North Central Region visit www.ncipmc.org 

For more information on IPM in Michigan visit www.ipm.msu.edu

Transcript

Erin Lizotte (00:03):
Welcome to a special Pest Central Limited series celebrating the 50th anniversary of Integrated Pest Management. This collaborative effort focuses on the history and future of IPM in the north central region and features university faculty and agency staff interviews from around the region. This work is supported by the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture and the North Central IPM center. This podcast is edited and produced by Michigan State University Extension. MSU is an affirmative action, equal opportunity employer. Michigan State University Extension programs and materials are open to all.
Well, welcome to the IPM Central Podcast and our special series celebrating the 50th anniversary of Integrated Pest Management. My name is Erin Lizotte, and I'm the IPM Coordinator at Michigan State University. Today. I have the pleasure of speaking to Dr. George Bird. Dr. Bird is a Professor Emeritus in the Michigan State University Department of Entomology, and also played a key role in IPM research, outreach and adoption in Michigan and beyond. His contributions include serving as President of the Society of Nematologists, the first National Director for the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program, and 19 years of service on the Board of Directors for the Rodale Institute. So welcome Dr. Bird. Thanks for joining us today.

George Bird (01:43):
Thank you, Erin.

Erin Lizotte (01:45):
So as we're reflecting back on history, I'm really excited to have you here, Dr. Bird. You have such a storied history with IPM having started at MSU in 1973, really kind of during the genesis of IPM. Can you share with us a little bit about those early days and the catalysts driving IPM into the spotlight as the future of pest management?

George Bird (02:09):
Well, first let me say that it is really an honor, okay, to be part of this podcast in relation to the 50th anniversary celebration for Integrated Pest Management. And I am in complete agreement that the Stern, Smith van den Bosch and Hagen paper of 1972 is a great starting point for Integrated Pest Management. At that time, there was a lot of biological control research going on and also some general pest management research. I actually had the privilege of visiting Ray Smith's office several times, where he had thousands of books in a two story bookshelf that you had to have a ladder to get up to.
And I also had the privilege of hosting van den Bosch at my home during a IPM pest modeling meeting that was between the United States and the USSR. And this at that time was one of the very first bilateral science meetings. If my memory is correct though, the term IPM really didn't get into the literature until about 1977 with one of the first congressional hearings on Integrated Pest Management. But by 1979, President Carter included IPM in a fairly major way in his August environmental address to Congress. So it was an exciting time. There were a lot of people that were very much against Integrated Pests Management at that time, but now we're celebrating the 50th anniversary.

Erin Lizotte (04:00):
Yes. And so, as you look specifically back at the work that has been achieved at MSU in relation to IPM over the last 50 years, are there any projects or breakthroughs or anything that really stands out to you?

George Bird (04:16):
Well, I think it's the general process of Integrated Pest Management that MSU had a lot to deal with. At that time, University of California, Berkeley and Cornell were very much engaged in biological control. And we also worked very closely with Texas A&M University. And they helped us quite a bit with the politics and getting a lot of the grant money much of which is still available today. But I think in the process of Integrated Pest Management, both the biological monitoring that we call scouting and the environmental monitoring that deals with the weather is extremely important. So the IPM process is sound for the future.
The scouting must include both the pests, the crops, and also the other organisms that are in the environment that are controlling the pests. From the environmental monitoring standpoint, Michigan has a great program there with our weather network. And that started out back in the 1970s. When we used the aviation weather network. We had a small mainframe computer that was about the size of a refrigerator that every day access all the aviation weather networks to get the information that was then put out through a codaphone that was called the Pest Management Executive System. And that was the precursor of the internet.

Erin Lizotte (05:52):
Okay. Wow. That's amazing. Yeah. I remember even when I started, we still called it the codaphone and I used to record an audio voicemail that growers could call in and listen to get the most recent weather modeling data and the most recent pest management data. So even I got in on the tail end of some of those things, and it is amazing to see how far some of those systems have come and how they all work together. Things like Enviroweather, the Pest Diagnostics Clinic, how all these things come together to really help growers build resilient IPM programs. So one of the things that I think has come up in recent years is the discussion about the viability of IPM in the face of climate change and in the face of invasive pests. So can you talk a little bit about what you see in terms of the future of IPM and how resilient IPM can be in the face of these challenges?

George Bird (06:55):
Well, I think the future of IPM is bright, but for it to be successful, I think we're going to have to do a fair amount of marketing of IPM. And as a university professor, I never would've believed that George Bird would be an advocate for marketing, but basically before I go there, I want to say that the one thing that is certain is change and with a change in climate, there's going to be a major change in the pests that are available. And then when we use our various strategies and tactics, that also puts pressure on populations and they are always changing. So there will be this need for integrated pest management for us to have highly successful food systems to feed a world of what today is 8 billion people. And it looks like it may get to the 10 billion people before it was anticipated.
So in our toolbox today, we have basically three things. We have education. And that can be a difficult process. We have facilitation. And that basically means like if the pheromones that are needed for biological monitoring of insect are not available, then they won't be used. So we have to have facilitation. And then there's persuasion. And I was on several farms earlier this spring, where the people were talking about the fact that their marketing people absolutely require sustainability in the concept today. And so there's a very positive aspect there. And so when it comes to persuasion, basically the carrot is good and people don't like the stick, even though we have certain laws and things like that that affect IPM. So I think it's bright, but I think we're going to have to do a better job of marketing it.
And if I can go on, you can see, I wore this shirt today, okay, that basically is about the Soybean Cyst Nematode Coalition. And this is the most amazing IPM program that I've ever been involved in. And we have 28 states involved. We have eight transnational corporations involved and we use a marketing company to get us multimedia exposure. We've had about 800 articles written on it in the past few years. And some of our videos have gotten close to a million views, and we have many, many, many more media impressions than that. So there are many exciting new things that can take place that you and I don't even know what they are today.

Erin Lizotte (09:38):
Yes. I think the coalition is a great example of when research, outreach and resources come together to create something that's really useful and really impactful on a large scale. And I think, maybe that's the last point that probably me and the IPM coordinator position I've been thinking a lot about, and that's how do we get more resources to push towards?

George Bird (10:02):
You know I made a little outline of the things that I would like to cover today. And the last one that was on that relates to what you just said. And you also, in my introduction say that I said that I do a little bit of international traveling today. And one thing I can tell you is that the land grant system is the envy of the world. And basically we all know that the land grant system has three components to it. The teaching part, the research part and the extension part. And most nations throughout the world have the teaching part and the research component, but most nations lack the extension part. And that's what they're very envious of that we have. And so why is our extension successful? It is successful basically because funding comes from a coalition of three different sources. It comes from federal, it comes from state and it comes from local. So all the county commissioners are even involved in allocating those local funds. And that's what makes it successful. And it's the marketing that we need to make sure that it has this success for the future.

Erin Lizotte (11:22):
Well, thank you, Dr. Bird for your time today. I really appreciate it. Anyone looking for more information about IPM can check out our website, which is ipm.msu.edu. And that site can link you up to our Pest Diagnostic Clinic as well as the Enviroweather site. So thanks again, Dr. Bird.

George Bird (11:42):
Well, thank you very much.

Erin Lizotte (11:48):
Thanks for joining us to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Integrated Pest Management. Check the show notes for resources mentioned in this podcast and be sure to subscribe so you don't miss any future episodes.