Southern IPM Center Evaluation Specialist, Tegan Walker, in collaboration with David Lane and Deb Grantham at the Northeastern IPM Center, has published a paper in the Journal of IPM titled IPM Adoption and Impacts in the United States. The paper is a result of a long-term collaboration with the IPM Centers and with state IPM coordinators.

A little about the paper from a condensed abstract:

Increased Integrated Pest Management (IPM) adoption hinges not only on the future of innovative research, but also on the willingness of growers to adopt new IPM technologies. Adoption and diffusion of innovations can encounter many different challenges. By better understanding the drivers of and barriers to IPM adoption, future research, extension, and education can better target behavior change. This study sought to better understand the IPM adoption drivers and barriers, along with the impacts of IPM, from the perspective of state IPM coordinators via an online Qualtrics survey. Overall, these findings demonstrate the importance of providing improved IPM economic cost-benefit analyses to accompany the promotion of new and existing IPM innovations…These findings also suggest a need for more comprehensive extension and education programs to specifically address the perceived ‘high cost of practice,’ ‘difficulty of implementation’, and ‘lack of awareness’ by communicating improved IPM cost-benefit analyses.

Find out more information about the Southern IPM Center at https://southernipm.org/