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Funded Project |
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Funding Program:
IPM Partnership Grants |
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Project Title:
Soybean Adoption Survey for Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia |
Project Directors (PDs):
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Lead State: MA Lead Organization: University of Massachusetts |
| Undesignated Funding: $29,755 |
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Start Date: May-01-2010 End Date: Apr-30-2011 |
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No-Cost Extension Date: Jun-30-2012 |
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Site/Commodity: soybeans, field crops |
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Summary:
Extension and research professionals, crop consultants and Department of Agriculture staff in the 4 Mid-Atlantic States of Delaware, Maryland, West Virginia and Virginia comprise a sub-group of the Northeastern IPM Working Group. Over the past year (2008-2009) they have collaborated to develop a draft of an IPM Guideline for soybeans relevant to their states. Over the winter of 2009-2010, the Working Group specialists will solicit further review of the current Guideline (See Appendix A) from industry contacts, and participate in converting the completed Soybean IPM Guideline to a Dillman Method mail survey.
Funding is sought for the resources needed to implement this survey beginning after soybean harvest in Fall, 2010. Using a statistically valid sample of the total 4-state soybean grower population, we will assess current soybean grower IPM adoption levels on a tactic-by-tactic basis and summarize them along a continuum of adoption. The survey will provide a baseline against which to measure changes in grower knowledge, behavior, and condition into the future. Further, retrospective questions will ask about IPM practices that growers have adopted over the past 5-10 years. These results will provide immediate data on impacts of IPM programming in the four states. They also will help soybean specialists to better understand future research and/or extension activities needs. Objectives: The sole objective of the project is execution, analysis, and summarization of a large-scale Dillman Method mail survey of soybean growers in Delaware, Maryland, West Virginia and Virginia. The proposed activity will support goals of the national IPM roadmap by bringing together a motivated core group of domain experts to help evaluate impacts of IPM an important crop in the region. Summarized survey results will facilitate educational programming in concert with the Soybean IPM Elements, and each will be valuable teaching tools to reach growers, crop consultants and other field personnel. The adoption survey will also serve as a needs assessment to indicate where further research or extension emphasis is needed. Other anticipated impacts of the project include: Improved regional coordination and cooperation among Land Grant specialists; enhanced ability of IPM Specialists and IPM consultants to encourage further adoption of IPM by demonstrating concrete, local examples of positive economic, health or environmental outcomes; enhanced ability to plan for future evaluation when designing new programs; increased opportunities for end users to present themselves as "good stewards" by documenting their use of IPM; increased public awareness of IPM benefits to society as a whole; and, enhanced policy-maker support for IPM funding. Proposal |
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Final Report: |
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Outcomes Deliverables for the project include the Mid-Atlantic Soybean IPM Protocol (Appendix A), The Mid-Atlantic Soybean IPM Survey (Appendix B), and the summary report on survey results (Appendix C). Such an extensive survey process (i.e., initial postcard notifying samples members that a survey would be coming, the initial mailing of a cover letter, survey and stamped return envelope, a one-week follow up postcards reminding everyone to complete the survey, and a four week follow up with a second cover letter, survey and return envelope) and large sample size proved once again to be logistically difficult, requiring many hours of work by the PI and three part time workers to carry out. A further complicating factor was a rate change by the US Postal service that occurred after we had purchased 2000 pre-stamped return envelopes, approx. 3800 pre-stamped postcards and similar numbers of re-stamped ($.60) envelopes for the initial mailing and 4 week follow up. Although we are grateful to the United Soybean Board for allowing us to use their mailing list, we learned in retrospect that the list had apparently not been recently updated (i.e., purged of growers/businesses that were no longer growing soybeans, and contained numerous addresses that were either no longer valid or contained names of deceased persons). A total of 1690 surveys were mailed, and 743 surveys were returned, resulting in an overall response rate of 45% (This total does not include 39 surveys that were returned as not deliverable, and 4 that were sent to deceased persons). However, 336 respondents checked the box indicating that they did not grow soybeans. Hence, our response rate for usable surveys was only 20%. It can be argued that, had the mailing list been purged before the survey, we would have had at least a 43% usable response rate, given that our random sample would have picked more actual soybean growers. Another factor contributing to the response rate may have been the length of the survey (14 pages), and the complexity of many of the questions. As important as it is to assess adoption and impacts of IPM, the cost and complexity of the survey method as well as issues of mailing list quality (encountered in previous surveys by Project Directors), are likely to remain barriers to others hoping to do such assessments. |
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Impacts The principal impact of the project is an understanding of the extent to which Mid-Atlantic soybean growers have adopted elements of IPM. Survey results indicated that the overwhelming majority (83%) of responding growers utilize some sort of field monitoring and 56% use action thresholds to make their pest management decisions. In addition, many other elements described in the soybean IPM Protocol are in common use, including: rotating between soybeans and some other crop (66.1%), planting narrow row beans (47.9%), using seed with a germination percentage of 85% or greater (70.8 %), using only well-cleaned, high quality, disease free seed (69.9 %), and avoiding planting into cold, wet soils (60.7 %). keeping records of planting dates, field locations and varieties planted (80.6%), fertilizer applications (78.6%), and pesticide applications (64.6%). In terms of safeguarding human health and the environment, key findings have to do with the extent to which soybean growers rely on pyrethroid insecticides to control insect pests, and glyphosate to control weeds. A related finding is that, of those who do use insecticides, 46.1% of respondents rotate among classes of insecticides once or more per season , while only 26.8% claim to never rotate among classes of insecticides. These findings represent a good baseline from which to measure changes in behavior and condition going forward. Regional soybean specialists appear to have an excellent teachable moment to improve IPM adoption particularly given the importance of Extension newsletters and Extension publications (such as pest management guides) to Mid-Atlantic soybean growers. Such Extension information sources were each cited as somewhat important or very important by 91% of respondents, followed by winter meetings or workshops (88%) and in-season field days (82%), and, given that soybean growers report they would use more IPM techniques, if presented with better evidence that the techniques work (37% of respondents), or by learning more about how to use IPM (34.4%). Availability of cost-sharing for IPM consultants (29.2%), markets that want IPM crops (28.5%), and new IPM techniques that are safer to use than my current practices (26.3) would also enhance IPM use. A further impact of the survey is an improved understanding of which pests are considered important in the soybean system, and the areas that growers feel need more research. |
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