Pest Management Strategic Plans (PMSPs) were developed to make realistic and current information on pest management practices and needs readily available to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for use in regulatory decisions.  The role of PMSPs has expanded into guidance for pest management research, education and implementation.  This fact sheet describes the ways PMSPs benefit pest management practitioners, educators, regulators, and researchers are not well publicized.
 

EPA uses

* Basic understanding of a crop
      EPA staff use PMSPs as basic sources of information about current production practices and pest management in a particular crop. 

* Pesticide registrations
      PMSPs are used by staff in the EPA Biological and Economic Analysis Division when evaluating pesticide registration requests.  PMSPs are often checked to inform the analyst about known pest problems and to identify chemistries being developed.  The availability of this information in a comprehensive package benefits the efficiency of these evaluations, which is especially useful for expediting emergency exemption requests. 

* Risk assessments
      Information in PMSPs about the crop timeline and worker activities is often consulted to refine occupational risk assessments. 

* Benefits assessments and risk mitigation
      EPA uses PMSPs to provide understanding of benefits and costs that arise from a change in the use pattern of a chemical on a crop.  A good example for this use is the benefits assessments for azinphos-methyl at http://www.epa.gov/oppsrrd1/op/azm.htm.

 

Other uses

* Program guidance
      University, state and Federal government education and regulatory programs, as well as commodity and industry associations, need to stay in touch with client/member needs and priorities.  The dialogue among stakeholders that occurs to create a PMSP is an ideal setting for identifying needs and priorities, which are recorded in the PMSP document.

 * Support for research proposals
      Funding agencies recognize PMSPs as credible documentation of stakeholder interest.  Feedback from target audiences is valuable for initiating and guiding projects.  Being able to cite stakeholder interest has become an important component for successful funding applications.
     

 * Educational benefit
      Working through the pros, cons and other characteristics for all of the current and potential management options for each major insect, disease, weed and vertebrate pest of a crop or other IPM setting is no small task.  It is also a great learning experience.  It is an opportunity to review one's personal knowledge and opinion, while comparing and combining it with the experience and expertise of other people.  The result is a broader and deeper understanding of the crop system, especially the pest management aspects. 

* Emergency response
      The PMSP process includes discussion of possible responses to potential new problems such as loss of key pesticide registrations, pesticide resistance, or new pests.  A PMSP is not a fully developed emergency response plan, but it does serve as a first step.  

* Strategic roadmap
      Pest managers are busy keeping up with the present.  There are few opportunities for collective focus on strategic planning.  Consideration of reduced risk alternatives and other new technologies is a central part of creating a PMSP.  A PMSP workshop serves as a forum to envision and plan pest management advances for the future. 

* Support for specialty uses
      Because of smaller potential sales than large acreage crops such as corn and soybeans; specialty crops and settings such as vegetables, fruits, forestry, ornamental plants, greenhouse, and nursery do not receive the same degree of private sector investment in crop protection materials.  Support for new and continued registrations of conventional pesticides, reduced risk pesticides, and biological control agents for these specialty uses is provided by a government-industry cooperative program called IR-4.  Each year about five specialty crop priorities identified in PMSPs have been given special consideration through the IR-4 program.