With the IPMWorks Resource Toolbox scheduled to open later this year, the Horizon 2020 project’s YouTube channel is beginning to fill up with introductions to some of its hubs and coverage of some of the events that have been held.
IPMWorks is establishing a “European Union-wide farm network demonstrating and promoting cost-effective IPM strategies”. Crucial to this is the creation of 21 new groups or hubs of demonstration farms in 14 countries, building on five existing national networks of IPM demonstration farms.
The IPMWorks YouTube channel offers short, informative overviews of a number of these hubs. For example, hub coach Andrew Christie (top left), from Scotland’s James Hutton Institute, presents the Scottish arable crop hub covering farms in Perthshire, Angus and Fife.
Typical crops for these farms are spring barley for malting, winter wheat for distilling, winter barley, oilseed rape and potatoes. Andrew identifies some of the IPM measures being trialled within the group. These include cover cropping, companion and inter-cropping, the transition to direct drilling and alternative plant protection programmes.
As the IPM Works website notes, this hub faces some particular challenges because of the limited varietal selection when growing for malting and distilling, for example, and a wet, mild climate which limits the opportunities for field work.
In a rather different climate, Virginia Bagnoni, from the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies in Pisa, presents a hub of Italian olive growers in Monte Pisano. These 13 farms range in size from 1 hectare to 60 hectares, she explains, and are in a very special landscape. The farms use high-density terraced olive groves with dry stone walls, surrounded by forest and Mediterranean brush in an area popular with locals and tourists.
It means access is difficult for machines and explains why minimum intervention and organic approaches are preferred. One of the problems farmers are tackling are olive flies, trialling IPM measures such as prevention, push-pull strategies and repulsion.
One of the Spanish hubs is addressing greenhouse horticulture through a hub of 12 farmers in the province of Almeria who have already introduced IPM measures for crops typical of the region (tomatoes, peppers, courgettes, aubergines etc.).
Coexphal’s Eduardo Crisol explains that farmers in the hub are seeking to optimise their biological control strategies. As the IPM Works website explains, farmers are seeking to “integrate multi-function plant species and other biodiversity to contribute to boost pest regulation”. As Eduardo says, this includes new features both within the greenhouses, flower strips for example, and beyond the greenhouses, such as the introduction of hedgerows.
Other hubs presented include Portuguese vineyards and outdoor vegetables, vineyards in Greece and Spain, arable field crops in Ireland, Italy and Germany, and greenhouse production in Belgium (courgettes and soft fruit).
Other videos show capacity-building and demonstration events. These include a visit to one of France’s 3,000 demonstration farms that included cover cropping, hedging and the preservation of soil structure, and a Portuguese demonstration of ozone application technology in vineyards, which invited participants to identify drivers and blockers to its adoption.
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