Extension pest managment helps keep food and families safe from farm to homes

In the mid-1990s, Arizona’s cotton industry faced an existential threat.

A new pest -– the sweet potato or silverleaf whitefly - had come to the state and was devastating crops so badly that some people feared total collapse of the entire industry. Pest management philosophy at the time was largely scorched-earth – kill everything, including the hundreds of benign or beneficial species that live in an average cotton field.

“There was very little specific science that we could apply to our environment and our location,” said Peter Ellsworth, Ph.D., a University of Arizona entomologist and Cooperative Extension specialist in integrated pest management.

“The science had a lot of catching up to do, and then the application as well. The focus was on just preservation of the industry initially, but very quickly it became an issue of the health of our environment.”

Using IPM – a holistic approach that combines insecticides and growing practices to minimize spraying - Cooperative Extension helped growers deal with the problem and not only survive but thrive.

The overarching goals of IPM are to reduce risk to human health, the environment and the economy. It involves everything from keeping mice out of your home, food safe in schools and crops safe in fields. It’s mostly an out of sight, out of mind system of protection, Ellsworth said.

“You're not going to see it on a grocery store shelf. You're not going to see it in your daily living. And it's part of the process that people would rather not have to engage. It's about pests and the challenges they create in our food and fiber production systems.”

Arizona is a leader in environmental stewardship in pest management. We don’t just spray to kill pests that kill crops. The picture is much more complex, and Extension research has helped cotton growers spray fewer chemicals on crops last year than ever before.

“When you think about spraying insecticides, you think, ‘They're just spraying to kill the insects that killed the crop.’ But that's no longer the case, and more so here in Arizona than anywhere else,” Ellsworth said.

Extension scientists have studied and worked with crop systems in Mexico, Asia, Africa, Europe and South America – learning and helping growers learn. Extension is a key player in transferring technology from scientists to users. When Ellsworth talks about technology, he includes the instructions and users that make it work.

The science and the delivery of that science are equally vital to growers’ success.

“Where I see success is where there's either Cooperate Extension explicitly, or there's an analog to that that functions well. Where I see struggling and problems, it's where those things are absent,” he said.

Community Pest Management

Extension IPM isn’t just about protecting commercial crops.

Lucy Li, Ph.D., another Extension entomologist who works in community IPM, helps keep Arizona safe from household pests, including rats, mice, bed bugs, bees, ticks and mosquitoes – all of which can be threats to health and economic wellbeing.

When actor Gene Hackman and his wife, Betsy Arakawa, died in New Mexico and the coroner determined that Arakawa died from hantavirus, a disease spread by rodents, Cooperative Extension got a flurry of questions about mice and rats. But the rodents we most often come in contact with – house mice, roof rats and Norway rats – don’t carry the virus, which can be fatal to people.

Mosquitoes are a bigger threat.

“Mosquitoes are the deadliest animals in the world. They kill about 1 million people every year,” Li said.

Although most deaths from mosquitoes occur in Africa and Asia, there is cause for concern in the United States. The Aedes aegypti mosquito, which is now found as far north as northern Arizona, can carry and transmit diseases like zika, dengue fever and chikungunya – threats that could become worse as our climate warms and the species spreads, she said.

“I reach out to (local) environmental health professionals, animal control, vector control, and community health representatives to educate as many people as I can, so they will have the knowledge to go out to their communities to educate as many people as they can,” Li said.

“Collaboration and cooperation is always the key. That’s part of Extension. We reach out to communities, so that our life is healthier and better where we live, work and learn,” she said.

Bees and scorpions – both of which emerge with warmer weather – are also big concerns, especially bees. If you see bees swarming, the risk is low, because the bees are probably just moving or trying to find a spot to establish a new hive.

“Swarming generally is not a concern. They will move on in two or three days. If you see them making honeycombs, that’s where they’re going to have a hive,” she said.

Food Safety

Extension also has scientists working on commercial food safety. Channah Rock, Ph.D., was named one of University of Arizona’s 2024 Women of Impact.

Her work in food safety and water quality led to her nomination, said Joan E Curry, Ph.D., interim head of the Department of Environmental Science, and Jon Chorover, interim Dean for Research, Division of Agriculture, Life and Veterinary Sciences and Cooperative Extension, who nominated the 18-year Extension water quality specialist.

“Her impact is felt in the economy of specialty crops throughout the vegetable growing regions of western Arizona and more broadly through her influence on the science and technology that prevents microbial contamination of vegetables,” they wrote in their nomination letter.

Rock’s work with the Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, other government agencies and private industry ensures that food is safe from the field to the store.

On the Horizon

Ellsworth sees extension IPM moving forward on three horizons: drones and other precision agriculture techniques, machine learning and crop trait management through genetic engineering. All will require growers to be not just farmers, but citizen scientists, he said.

“They're more sophisticated. They're more educated. They're more knowledgeable. They're ecological engineers, and that's a complex enterprise. You're trying to produce food and fiber that's healthy and won't get you sick, and we'll support your good health, but you have to do that in the face of all these challenges to your system,” he said.

Ellsworth does not see agriculture fading in Arizona anytime soon.

“When I was interviewing in 1990, people said, ‘Well, what are you interviewing for?’ I told them, ‘Well, I'm going to work in agriculture.’ ‘Yeah, that's gonna be gone by the time you retire.’ I'm a little closer to retirement than I was 34 years ago, and agriculture's still here and I would say it’s thriving.

“There are challenges we're not entirely safe, but I think it'll continue to be here in one form or another.”

To learn more, see the Arizona Pest Management Center website or the Community IPM website.

To learn more about Extension's economic impact, including tens of millions of dollars annually from Integrated Pest Management, read this report.