Wright's farm has been sustainably farming since 1903. By keeping our land healthy and prosperous we have devoted over a hundred years to growing fruit.
Sustainable agriculture refers to the ability of a farm to produce food indefinitely, without causing severe or irreversible damage to ecosystem health. Although air and sunlight are available everywhere on Earth, crops also depend on soil nutrients and the availability of water.
When farmers grow and harvest crops, they remove some of these nutrients from the soil. Without replenishment, land suffers from nutrient depletion and becomes either unusable or suffers from reduced yields. Sustainable agriculture depends on replenishing the soil while minimizing the use of non-renewable resources Sustainable agriculture was also addressed by the 1990 farm bill.
It was defined as follows:
Stated by: “the term sustainable agriculture means an integrated system of plant and animal production practices having a site-specific application that will, over the long term:
Satisfy human food and fiber needs
Enhance environmental quality and the natural resource base upon which the agricultural economy depends
make the most efficient use of nonrenewable resources and on-farm resources and integrate, where appropriate, natural biological cycles and controls
sustain the economic viability of farm operations
enhance the quality of life for farmers and society as a whole.
In agriculture, integrated pest management (IPM) is a pest control strategy that uses a variety of complementary strategies to prevent, observe, and control harmful pests including fungi and disease.It is an ecological approach with a main goal of significantly reducing or eliminating the use of pesticides while at the same time managing pest populations at an acceptable leveI.
How IPM works
An IPM system is designed around six basic components:
Acceptable pest levels: The emphasis is on control, not eradication. IPM holds that wiping out an entire pest population is often impossible, and the attempt can be more costly, environmentally unsafe, and frequently unachievable.
Preventive cultural practices: Selecting varieties best for local growing conditions, and maintaining healthy crops, is the first line of defense, together with plant quarantine and 'cultural techniques' such as crop sanitation (e.g. removal of diseased plants to prevent spread of infection.
Monitoring: Regular observation is the cornerstone of IPM. Observation is broken into two steps, first; inspection and second; identification.Visual inspection, insect and spore traps, and other measurement methods and monitoring tools are used to monitor pest levels. Accurate pest identification is critical to a successful IPM program. Record-keeping is essential, as is a thorough knowledge of the behavior and reproductive cycles of target pests. Since insects are cold-blooded, their physical development is dependent on the temperature of their environment. Many insects have had their development cycles modeled in terms of degree days. Monitor the degree days of an environment to determine when is the optimal time for a specific insect's outbreak.
Mechanical controls: Should a pest reach an unacceptable level, mechanical methods are the first options to consider. They include simple hand-picking, erecting insect barriers, using traps, vacuuming, and tillage to disrupt breeding.
Biological Controls: Natural biological processes and materials can provide control, with minimal environmental impact, and often at low cost. The main focus here is on promoting beneficial insects that eat target pests. Biological Insecticides, (derived from naturally occurring microorganisms ), also fit in this category.
Chemical controls: Lastly, Synthetic pesticides are generally only used as required and often only at specific times in a pests life cycle. Many of the newer pesticide groups are derived from plants or naturally occurring substances.
Reliance on knowledge, experience, observation, and integration of multiple techniques makes IPM a perfect fit for organic, and large-scale farms. IPM can reduce human and environmental exposure to hazardous chemicals, and potentially lower overall costs of pesticide application material and labor.
Here are some links to follow if you are interested in more information on how Integrated Pest Management works!
NYS's Ag School - Cornell
Cornell University's Fruit IPM
Penn State's IPM Site
The University of Illinois IPM site