North American potato producers need to adopt more sophisticated integrated pest management programs, says Alan Schreiber, an entomologist and private researcher from Washington state.
Current protocols will likely lead to pesticide resistance, he added.
The potato industry is well behind other high value crops, such as cotton and tree fruit, when it comes to pest management, the president of the Agricultural Development Group, a private research company, said yesterday during Manitoba Potato Production Days in Brandon.
“In potatoes, it is just spray, spray, spray and spray,” he said. “Our IPM programs … are basically spray programs.”
Fruit producers scout for and count beneficial organisms, but that rarely or never happens in the potato industry, he said.
“They will actually take counts of beneficials and incorporate the number of beneficials into their thresholds.”
Schreiber, who wrote potato IPM programs in Idaho, Washington and Oregon, said he supports pesticide use, but overuse will likely lead to resistance.
He doesn’t want producers to lose a key class of insecticides known as neonicotinoids, he added.
“They are really cheap … they are very broad spectrum, what’s not to like. But they are the crack of the insect world,” he said.
“Depending on where you are in the United States or Canada, the resistance is already here or it’s inevitable. And when we blow the neonicotinoids … we are going to be in very big trouble.”
Environmental organizations are pressuring the fast food industry to buy potatoes that are grown with less or no pesticides.
Potato producers will have to adapt to the new reality if McDonald’s succumbs to the pressure, Schreiber said.
“If end users decide that’s what society wants, then we have no choice.”
