- Question: What about microbial risks due to the absence of pesticide use?
- There is some work conducted with corn/peanut aflatoxin.
Focus on outcome measurements so you look at both pesticide use and no pesticide use.
- Detection challenge for mycotoxins may not correlate with pesticide use.
- Pest pressure/pest changes -> need responses by farmers. Measurement systems have to track on a project level as to how farmers react, what tools they use to measure impacts.
- How/when is it appropriate to bring these factors into assessment systems?
Have to look at cropping system level (resistance management literature), then shifts in cropping systems will occur.
One has to realize that agriculture in and of itself is artificial, i.e. "nature" does not by itself produce on the level that is possible with production agriculture.
- Example: corn root worm problem; we made assumptions and we had solutions. The life of the pest may be in bio-pause for 3 to 5 years. We have to look for alternatives and continually evolve in the development of solutions. We are in a treadmill at this time.
We have to count the number of alternatives under any given situation, and essentially use a relative ranking system.
- Don't look at tools in the "tool kit" but how the tools have been used.
Need to be able to project potential changes and environmental impacts if there is an unforeseen control failure.
Lack of management diversity; the failure is not the number of options but whether they are used.
Need to focus on key pests; assess system based on farming practices and decision making at the farm level. Need to determine the diversity of options farmers are using.
- Question: Do measurement systems have a resistance factor built in?
- No; one must create a resistance index, ecosystem stability index.
- Farmers can build in a resistance factor into choice of pesticides, but they need indicators of sustainability of the entire farming system, not only pesticides.
- Thresholds that trigger use of alternatives: Do we need to tell farmers the risks if they choose not to use the possible alternatives?
- Resistance is the probability of genetic adaptation: How much genetic change plus selection pressure; it still comes down to the need to look at use.