This week, the National Corn Growers Association celebrates two sides of crop management involving insects on the farm.
This week is both Pest Week and Pollinator Week, a unique combination to promote good pest control practices and pollinator protection efforts. Nebraska farmer and NCGA board member, Brandon Hunnicutt says that the organization, along with the United Soybean Board, promotes responsible pest control practices through the Take Action Program. “It’s a farmer-focused education platform, designed to help farmers manage herbicide, fungicide, and insect resistance. So, the goal is to encourage farmers to adopt management practices that lessen the impact of resistant plants and preserve current and future crop protection technologies,” he states.
Hunnicutt believes that balancing pest management and protecting pollinators is a key issue for farmers. “We don’t think about pollinators, especially in corn...,” he states, “we need to make sure we’re doing our best to work with our neighbors... Plus, the flip side is, there’s also a lot of beneficial insects out there that we need to be aware of that do help in our pest management decisions.”
Peter Berthelsen, with the Bee and Butterfly Habitat Fund, says that there are many ways farmers and landowners can protect pollinators. “We have a very unique, innovative program that’s called ‘Seed A Legacy,’ and, in this program, we actually provide landowners with one-on-one technical guidance about how to establish and manage and design pollinator habitat.
NCGA parters with the Bee and Butterfly Habitat Fund to support creating new habitats for pollinators as a way to make farmers more sustainable and neighborly, also to show how ag leads the way in conservation.
For more information on pest management, click HERE.
For more information on protecting pollinators, click HERE.