Rita Schenck
Douglas Huizenga
Institute for Environmental Research and Education
December 2000
(The full report in pdf format can be found here)

Executive Summary

Substantial work on Integrated Pest Management in Livestock has provided technical resources for managing pests on livestock. However, up to now little has been done to develop a program that supports the adoption of IPM practices in this important agricultural sector. This report describes an IPM plan for the cattle industry in Nebraska. It is based on the use of a comprehensive environmental management system that includes conformance to international standards and the use of life cycle assessment to provide ecolabels.

The elements of the IPM plan are:

• Characterization of the Cattle industry in Nebraska. 4 million cattle are slaughtered in Nebraska every year; over 70% of the landmass is devoted directly or indirectly to raising cattle.
• Development of a network of technical support for IPM implementation, through the University of Nebraska/cooperative extension program.
• Enrollment of 10 demonstration farms
• Communication through:
  - Internet dissemination
  - Use of farms/ranches as demonstrations in the cooperative extension service farm days
  - Publication in the Nebraska Cattlemen's publications and elsewhere.
• Tracking pesticide impacts using a life-cycle indicator (developed in this report)
• Identifying resources to develop a baseline of the current usage of pesticides and IPM practices in Nebraska cattle operations

The intent of this plan is to provide a management framework that will encourage producers to employ IPM practices in the context of a holistic environmental management program.

A science-based approach to measuring progress in reducing pesticide impacts is the key to the successes of this program. This plan introduces a Toxic Unit approach to measuring pesticide impacts which is based on the toxicity, persistence and fate of pesticides in the environment. Demonstration farms are expected to achieve a 50% reduction in Toxic Units within 10 years, and the industry as a whole to reduce toxic units by 10% in the same time period.

We wish to thank American Farmland Trust and the US EPA for their support of this work.