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  3. Strategic Planning

IPM Strategic Planning

   

IPM Strategic Planning

IPM Strategic Planning fosters collaboration and consensus among industry stakeholders, including farmers, researchers, and regulators. These living documents identify the critical pest management needs and concerns of agricultural industries. The comprehensive guides include production and industry overviews, key pests by growing stages, and critical research, educational and regulatory needs. 

 

The Strategic Planning Process

Inclusive workshops with a shared goal: Improve IPM

IPM Strategic Planning meetings are intensive, all-day events where growers, consultants and university faculty from a particular industry have broad discussions about what is (and isn’t) working in their cropping systems. The reports, available free through OSU Extension and the National IPM Database, information about the needs of farmers, plus updated data about current pests and management activities. 

For each industry, an IPM Strategic Plan document is created in collaboration with a representative group of farmers, researchers, extension agents, crop consultants, regulators, and other relevant stakeholders. Detailed information is obtained from this group regarding the pest management activities and strategies conducted during each of the crop stages. Stakeholders are consulted on critical pest management needs in research, regulation, and education, as well as broad needs related to IPM. The resulting document describes the pests, challenges, and critical needs in detail.

The IPM Strategic Planning project builds on our former Pest Management Strategic Planning (PMSP) project to create more IPM-focused PMSPs, to better understand IPM critical needs, and to develop stronger feedback pathways and greater agricultural network connectivity within Oregon and the Pacific Northwest in order to meet these needs and increase adoption.
 

A living document with regular revision

A key feature of the strategic planning process is a regular cycle of revision, with more explicit assessments of impacts over time, and changes in IPM adoption and practices that occur between consultations. The working group effectively forms an advisory group that partners with extension to provide capacity for industry-wide, adaptive improvements in IPM. The regular revision process provides a mechanism for monitoring status and trends, and to maintain engagement with the commodity advisory group.
 

IPM beyond crop production

In the last few years, multiple Pacific Northwest industries have been engaged in our project: onion, cranberry, sweet cherry, hazelnut, potato, mint, and pear. IPM Strategic Planning-style methods of assessment are also applicable to areas that lie beyond food and farming, including statewide agencies engaged with pest management associated with wild and protected areas, rights-of-way, parks and the corrections service, to expand the adoption of IPM across the state and the region.

What's in the plan? 

Each IPM Strategic Plan document consists of: 

  • Updated top-priority critical needs for research, education, and regulation 
  • Crop production overview & IPM management overview
  • Major crop pests by crop stage, and descriptions of each pest 
  • IPM activities by crop stage
  • Emerging and Invasive pests of concern 
  • PAMS terminology overview 
     

Find them here

Recent Plans and Publications

 

A Fresh Perspective 

IPM Strategic Planning is a useful process for research and extension faculty, especially new faculty,
because it allows them to gain a comprehensive understanding of the current state of a cropping
system directly from the growers and consultants. 

The strategic plans examine the current pest management practices within an industry,
and find ways to make improvements from an IPM perspective with input from a variety
of stakeholders at every step.  

  

Impacts in IPM

 

  
Regulatory Impact
  • The EPA and other regulatory agencies look to these documents to better understand current production and pest management practices within an industry when they review and evaluate the merits and needs for a new pesticide registration or re-registration. 
     
  • IPM Strategic Plans help industries, especially minor crops, in obtaining or retaining conventional, biological, and organic pesticide registrations, all of which are needed to manage pests and produce high quality crops that enter the food chain, and help growers to remain economically viable. This program builds resiliency and improves IPM adoption with a refined focus on decision-support and risk-management.
   
Improving stakeholder communication
  • The IPM Strategic Plan serves as an effective conduit for communication between farmers and other pest managers to regulators, policymakers, researchers, and other interested constituencies.
     
  • Data gathered from the process is used to create more targeted extension education programs in collaboration with extension agents.

     

  

Economic Impacts
  • The process and resulting document offers a strategic plan for the industry as a whole, to help focus where time, money, and energy should be spent on pest management issues.
     
  • The plan provides granting organizations with evidence of stakeholder input on pest management priorities, and may enable researchers to be more successful in obtaining federal grant funds to work pest management priorities for the industry.
     
 

Project History

The current IPM Strategic Planning format was initiated in 2016 with a USDA/NIFA grant award under the Applied Research and Development Program (ARDP, Project Number 2016-07652). The goal was to create a planning process and develop it into a model for stakeholder assessment and priority setting. This has become a key component of Oregon’s statewide IPM program, and capacity for expansion to other regional and national IPM programs.

The project connects consultative processes developed by US Regional IPM Centers with local IPM extension programming to achieve a more integrated research and extension system. We are developing a model for agricultural stakeholder engagement and follow-up on critical IPM challenges that combines Pest Management Strategic Planning (PMSP), Pest-Losses Impact Assessments, and participatory extension education.

Recent Partners

 

Interested in creating an IPM Strategic Plan for your commodity or industry? Reach out to Silvia Rondon 

 

 

(IPM Strategic Plan Booklet Mockup Image by Yeven Popov)