The Future of Pest Management in the Landscape

We have observed many changes in landscape pest management in just the last five years. New products, new regulations, and new pests are all a part of a rapidly growing and evolving industry.

Many of the changes we see are exciting, and a few are discouraging. In this article I’d like to discuss a few items that may change in the next five years and perhaps even speculate a bit as to their impact on the landscape industry.

One issue that has stirred up controversy since its signing in 1996 has been the Food Quality Protection Act. This piece of legislation replaced the outdated Delaney Clause with a new safety standard for pesticide residues and exposures. This new law differs dramatically from past regulations in that it looks at cumulative affects from exposures of all pesticides with similar modes of action.

For example, the total exposure to all organophosphate insecticides such as Dursban® (chlorpyrifos) would be lumped together. The EPA establishes a “risk cup” for that particular mode of action. The risk cup is the exposure over a 70-year period of time that is determined to be safe. All uses (food, urban, etc.) of products with a particular mode of action are loaded into the risk cup. If the exposure from all uses causes the risk cup to overflow, then some uses must be eliminated until the risk cup no longer overflows.

The organosphosphate and carbamate pesticides were the first products targeted by this new law. As the process moves along, the risk cup has been determined to be overflowing. This has generated considerable debate. Part of the debate centers on the use of “default assumptions.” In other words, when good exposure data isn’t available, we rely upon the worst case scenario just to be safe.

In some cases, this may significantly inflate the risk as the worst case scenario may be much higher than the actual exposure to certain pesticides. Thus, the risk cup contents are artificially inflated.

Due to the absence of data for some exposures and the debate over the use of default assumptions, the whole process has been slowed down. The original deadline for the review of the first group of pesticides was August 1999. The deadline in the year 2000 to review more than 9,000 tolerances for all the pesticides seems out of reach to many professionals in the landscape industry.

However, the Food Quality Protection Act will march on. Its overall impact is uncertain, but without a doubt, we will see the loss of some pesticide products for use in the landscape.

Some manufacturers will have to reduce their pesticide use sites on the label, and this decision will be based, in part, on economics. For example, if a pesticide is labeled for use in the landscape and on agricultural crops, a company may decide to keep the agricultural use label and drop the landscape uses if the agricultural use is more profitable. Some use sites will be dropped if they add an inordinate amount to the risk cup.

In addition, it will be interesting to watch and see if the frustration some people experience over the process to enact this new law will eventually cause it to be amended. Many of the environmental groups represented in the process recently withdrew over their frustrations with the procedure.

ENVIRONMENTAL GROUP INVOLVEMENT. Recently, I read a survey comparing today’s college graduates with their parents. One of the interesting comparisons was that today’s graduate is much less likely to be actively involved in any sort of environmental organization. Does this indicate that the wave of the environmental movement has crested? I don’t know if we can assume that, but we don’t necessarily want to see that statistic continue in that direction.

The efforts of reasonable environmental groups have gone a long way toward improving our industry. The pressure they presented, in addition to our own desire to see lower toxicity pesticides, has helped promote more environmentally friendly pest management approaches.

Most of the newer products we see introduced into the market are less toxic to people and wildlife than are many of the products these new introductions are replacing. No one can argue that this hasn’t been a good move.

As technology continues to improve, we’ll see more advances in that direction. However, in the case of insecticides, we are noticing a general reduction of the broad-spectrum pesticide products.

Unlike many of the older pesticide products, some of the newer ones are efficacious against a smaller range of insects. This isn’t necessarily bad because we are rarely coping with a wide array of pests all at once anyway. This may, however, require lawn care operators to carry a slightly larger inventory so that they can cover all of the bases.

I anticipate that the trend of narrower pesticide spectrums will continue in the products we see produced in the future because the mechanism by which these insecticides control pests is often quite unique and specific. This may be a certainly acceptable tradeoff as we move toward a market with lower toxicity pesticide products.

Along the same line of thought, these new chemistries on specific modes of action may render these new products a little less forgiving. In other words, the timing of their use and the method of application may be a little more critical.

Merit® (imidacloprid) and Mach 2® (halofenozide) are two good examples of this. They are much more effective against grubs when used proactively than when used as a rescue treatment. If targeted against grubs during beetle egg-laying, they are excellent products. As a rescue treatment to clean up an existing grub problem, they are less effective.

RELYING ON RESEARCH. Thus far we have discussed new regulations, and new pesticides. The ability to deal effectively with these new regulations and the development and effective use of these new pesticides relies heavily upon research.

Fortunately, research in the turfgrass and ornamentals programs at the major universities around the country has attempted to keep pace. In light of budget restrictions in most states, this has been quite challenging. Several programs have increased in response to the growing lawn care and landscape industry.

The programs at land-grant universities seek to solve problems of local significance and develop improved management and maintenance programs for the regional landscape industry. This information is communicated to the industry through outreach and extension programs.

In an issue of U. S. News and World Report published this summer, an article featuring the home lawn care industry discussed low maintenance approaches. The main thrust of this article was to point out that an efficiently managed and maintained lawn might not require all of the inputs one might assume.

In essence, the article went on to indicate that some lawn care services might be putting more product into the lawn than is necessary. This practice was somewhat defended by the fact that lawn care is a business striving to give the customers what they want. One might agree or disagree with the article, but I was enlightened by a recent phone call from a sales representative at a major national lawn care company regarding their pesticide practices.

Obviously, the caller did not know who I was, or what I did since he passed along many “facts” about insect management in turf that were far removed from the truth. I heard nothing from him that I knew was based on biological research from North Carolina. While I can’t say I was shocked at what I heard, I must admit it deviated dramatically from what I would call state-of-the-art pest management. It was based more on economics than on biology.

When I informed the caller what I did, he immediately hung up the phone. The truly discouraging aspects of the discussion were his frequent comments that each practice was based on local research. If these practices are based on local research, their researcher certainly obtains different results than I do.

However, this discussion begs us to ask a much more important question: Are the IPM programs being developed at universities across the country not meeting the bottom line business risk requirements of some or all lawn care companies? Are the university scientists researching these problems so out of touch with the industry that the IPM programs they produce aren’t applicable? Is something missing or was my phone call the exception?

These are important questions for the university program and the landscape industry to ask and to answer honestly. If our answer to any of these questions indicates room for improvement, then we need to address this issue.

As previously mentioned, many of the newer pesticides are becoming narrower in spectrum, and the timing of their application is increasingly critical. In some situations, this could make operating cost-effective pest management programs more difficult and increase the need for more scouting and monitoring of pests.

Since we all seek to make pest management as technologically and environmentally sound as possible, perhaps increased dialogue between the landscape industry and universities is in order.

Such dialogue is certain to benefit both groups. The university scientists benefit by the feedback fromthe landscape industry and the landscape industry benefits through programs that continue to meet their needs.

While most university/industry relationships maintain some level of dialogue, as the industry grows and becomes more complex and places increasing demands upon research, there is perhaps the need to strengthen our relationship.

As we look to the future and try to predict the technological advances that will continue to shape our rapidly changing industry one major factor remains unchanged: Landscape managers must give the customers what they want.

Three components of customer demands include: cost effectiveness, environmental soundness and satisfaction with the end product, and they are not and need not be mutually exclusive. Aggressive research programs developed in close association with the industry can assure we will meet pesticide managment needs both in the immediate and long-term future.

The author is professor of entomology, turfgrass and peanuts, N.C. State University, Raleigh, N.C.

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