College's pest readiness in jeopardy

by Interim Dean Jerry G. Schickedanz

The population explosion in the American Southwest appears to include not only snowbirds and other Homo sapiens, but also a lot of six-legged creatures that haven't cared to take up residence in New Mexico until recently.

In 1999, we continue to be overwhelmed by old and newly established pests. Range caterpillars and grasshoppers are old nemeses that are enjoying another prosperous summer in New Mexico. More recently established pests like the boll weevil, Japanese beetle and pecan nut casebearer are threatening the cotton, nursery/greenhouse and pecan industries, respectively. Then there are those infrequent visitors like the pepper weevil and pecan weevil, which have shown themselves again recently.

This is only part of the picture as we deal not only with hungry insects, but also with disease carriers like thrips, whiteflies and leafhoppers, which spread plant pathogens that can devastate crops. Most of the sickly chile plants we have seen earlier this year in the Mesilla Valley had beet curly top virus transmitted by beet leafhoppers.

Dealing with the world of insects and other arthropods is a tremendously complex business. As we face a million species or more, we have to consider how changes in weather and habitat are going to affect their abilities to prosper in our localities.

Cotton farmers in New Mexico felt extremely fortunate for most of this century to be in a boll weevil-free zone. This decade, we lost that advantage, possibly forever, after years of mild weather allowed the beast to comfortably spend the winter in our fair New Mexico.

Mild winters generally cause entomologists to shake their heads and anticipate problems in the growing season, and their concerns have been borne out in the 1990s. We have had to be ready to mobilize in the face of changes that threaten our crops or way of life.

NMSU's Cooperative Extension Service works as a rapid deployment force against new and revisited pestilence in the state. When there is an outbreak or new organisms appear, it is up to Extension to sample, identify and recommend an immediate course of action.

Extension works as expeditiously as possible with U.S. Department of Agriculture labs, other government agencies and our own Agricultural Experiment Station to cope with the unexpected and to anticipate problems before they happen.

This is the type of core responsibility for which there are no special grants, nor time to apply for them. It is one more reason I am concerned about the desire among some in Washington to shift money from formula funding of Extension and the Experiment Station to grant dollars.

This may be fine for those who wish to direct funding to some preconceived agenda, but it comes at the expense of a readiness to react to immediate, local situations. These core functions are in genuine jeopardy, if formula funding of the land-grant mission is displaced.

Core programming goes beyond responding to insect and disease emergencies. Core programming capability allows our organizations to develop education, technology transfer and research plans around needs identified by people at the local level.

We have a formal advisory structure that includes local councils advising county Extension offices and science centers, and regional representatives giving input to our state-wide Extension Support Council. This structure is effective at articulating local needs, which we never address in our five-year strategic plans. But we constantly keep our ears to the ground to be ready to respond to needs for which we never could have planned.

It is important that the university's land-grant mission be funded in a way that allows the flexibility we will need to deal with the unexpected in the next century.