Functional ecology & IPM - Michigan State University

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Response from growers to functional ecology

The project team has held two workshops focused strictly on functional ecology (one in 2004 and another in 2005), where they presented their recommendations to fruit growers and consultants. Jeanne Haley of Haley Consulting Services LCC, Chicago, Illinois, used surveys to evaluate participant's response to the workshop and the information presented. Haley notes, “By measuring how workshop participants measure the usefulness and importance of each functional ecology section presented, we are able to gauge how likely they might be to implement the indexes. If they don't feel that a particular section is useful or important to their orchard management, then they are not likely to adopt the tool. If, however, they find that the information is useful and important, then the likelihood of adoption increases. The additional measure of the participants' confidence in their ability to implement what they learned provides insights into where the project needs to concentrate its efforts to work with growers on better understanding how the tools work within the context of the growers' current management strategies.”

Haley concludes, “The functional ecology workshops developed under this grant to improve grower knowledge and understanding of orchard ecosystems, and specifically their understanding of the functional ecology models being developed, should be considered a success from the standpoint of presenting useful and important information to growers.

Nearly all usefulness and importance scores for both years were at or above 3.00 (based on a 4.0 scale with 4.0 being the most positive response), and in all cases increases in the scores were seen from 2004 to 2005. Where there is still work to do is in increasing the confidence of growers to implement what they've learned during the workshops.”

The Project Team has secured additional funding to work with growers and build their confidence in the technologies during 2006.

Field day at Clarksville Horticultural Research Station.

Comments from growers and consultants at the workshops
What was the most useful part of the workshop?

All of the topics directly apply to today's orchard evolution into tomorrow's orchards; Farming is a process and we must figure out how to best manage and measure the impacts of practices; a good reminder of how things work, excellent.
Better understanding of how all the components in an ecosystem affect each other.
Talking about orchard ecology and not just bugs, pests and chemicals to kill them.
Learning about indicators for assessing bio-system health.
Functional ecology and sustainability of orchards; Looking at the farm as an ecosystem and using ecological controls as part of IPM.

Other feedback:

(Need) a little more discussion on how the index could be used to guide federal dollars would help the growers understand the index. A very good workshop, I really enjoyed it. I look forward to the next one -- you should expect more growers next time.
It's totally exciting to realize there are other people out there that think like me.
Great time! Learned a lot but realized how much I don't know! Thank you for the valuable information.

Funding for this web site provided by American Farmland Trust and EPA Region 5 Strategic Agricultural Initiative program.

05/25/06