MATCHING INNOVATIONS WITH POTENTIAL USERS, A CASE-STUDY OF POTATO IPMPRACTICES

Through interviews and mail surveys, Ohio potato (Solanum tuberosum) g rowers were surveyed concerning their willingness to adopt three cultu ral controls being developed for management of the Colorado potato bee tle, Leptinotarsa decemlineata (Say), which had become increasingly di fficult to control. The principal objective of the research was to obt ain a deeper understanding of how farmers make decisions to adopt or n ot adopt new techniques and how these decisions are related to farmers ' educational backgrounds and the way they currently manage their farm s. The three cultural management options emphasized ecological approac hes to habitat management rather than ecologically disruptive chemical control: (1) using host plants in overwintering sites to slow the spr ing movement of the beetles to potato fields, (2) using larger potato plants at field borders than in the center of the field as a spring tr ap crop, and (3) concentrating beetles in relatively small undefoliate d areas to be killed with heat in late summer. Most respondents would not adopt these alternative pest management strategies, mainly because they perceived an unsatisfactory trade-off between logistic difficult ies and expenses and population suppression they would achieve compare d with traditional chemical control measures. Education correlated pos itively and experience in farming negatively with the willingness to t ry new pest management techniques. Additionally, growers responding mo re negatively to questions regarding integrated pest management strate gies were more willing to experiment with the alternative techniques, a result attributed to either the survey design or an indication of ex perience with the more intensive management effort required for integr ated pest management. This profile of potential innovators should be u sed by researchers to establish partnerships with farmers that could a ssist with both the research and development of new farming techniques and the adoption of successful systems by other farmers. (C) 1998 Els evier Science B.V. All rights reserved.