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Virginia Pest Management Information Program

...the Virginia component of the Southern IPM Center

Purpose: Virginia Tech Pesticide Programs is actively involved in the collection, analysis, reporting, and distribution of data on the use of pesticides in Virginia. We focus most of our efforts on establishing the importance of various pest management strategies to Virginia agriculture. We are actively developing crop pest management profiles and pest management strategic plans to support the continued availability of viable pest management tools for agriculture and specialty uses.

History: The Virginia Pest Management Information Program (VPMIP) is funded by the Southern IPM Center and supports the USDA - Office of Pest Management Policy. VPMIP was originally part of the National Agricultural Pesticide Impact Assessment Program (PIAP) established in 1977 to collect pesticide benefit use data for EPA's Office of Pesticide Programs. PIAP was a joint effort of USDA and the state Land-Grant University - Agricultural Experiment Stations and Cooperative Extension Services.

The Southern IPM Center was formed at North Carolina State University in 2003. VTPP serves as the primary state contact program for the Center in Virginia. This web site (and specifically this section of the VTPP.ORG site) and the Virginia Pest Management Information program are supported, in part, with funding from the Southern IPM Center. The VPMI program involves several grant funded projects including a "State Contact Project (SCP)" for Virginia. The objectives, an abstract, and partical contact information for this and other projects can be found on the Southern IPM Center's project database (select Virginia under the states variable to see all Virginia projects for all years). More specific contact information for the project director is available through the "About Us" link at the top of this page. The details for the other project, to develop crop profiles and pest management strategic plans for Virginia and our stakeholders are provided below.

Virginia Crop Profiles and Pest Management Strategic Plans: Virginia and other states are developing crop profiles and pest management strategic plans to help the USDA and the EPA maintain important pest management tools as their registrations are challenged by the Food Quality Protection Act (FQPA). This effort is extremely important to agriculture and to pesticide regulators to make sure the decisions associated with the FQPA are sound. It is very important that decision makers have the information available to take into account the potential impacts of their decisions on agricultural profitability, on the effective control of pests and diseases, and on our overall food and fiber supply. At the same time these decisions must be based on protecting our health and the health of our children from the potential adverse effects of hazardous pesticides.

PLEASE NOTE: Although crop profiles and pest management strategic plans are publicly available, these publications are NOT designed as pest management recommendations or do they target growers directly. The intended audience (readers) for these publications are pesticide regulators and pest management specialists involved in the decisionmaking process associated with the maintenance of viable pest management strategies for economically important agricultural crops and commodities.