Jack Bauer, who has about 900 acres of rice near Winnie, Texas, knows that integrated pest management and the associated scouting is important in catching pests early and reducing losses. But with all of farming's other demands, he admits that scouting isn't always on the top of his priority list.

And Bauer isn't alone. Mike Doguet, who manages his family's rice farm near China as well runs a rice mill, finds that time constraints compete with checking for pests. "I might check a field once a week at the most for certain things or at certain stages," Doguet says. "Sometimes I'm late and sometimes I don't even get to check it."

Drawn by a desire to improve their IPM practices, Bauer and Doguet are two of about a dozen farmers in Jefferson County east of Houston participating in a pilot rice IPM program. The pilot program was needed because consultants aren't available to check rice fields east of Houston, unlike the rice belt west of Houston, says Jefferson County Extension Agent Kelby Boldt. Aerial applicators or agricultural chemical dealership sales people occasionally check fields, but they only do so when growers call with a problem.

The rice IPM project, which is being funded by participating growers, provides a full-blown scouting program for $10 per acre. A steering committee comprised of Jefferson County rice producers worked closely with representatives of the Texas Pest Management Association and the Texas Agricultural Extension Service to implement the program.

During the 1999 season, growers with 824 acres enrolled. But the numbers are deceiving, Boldt says. Frequently, growers enrolled one field and used it as a sentry to alert them to problems in other fields.

"The idea behind it was to see if this could help the farmers do a little bit better job and hopefully, increase production and/or decrease costs," Boldt says.

A scout hired and trained by the IPM project is responsible for scouting the enrolled fields either once or twice a week, depending on the crop growth stage. The scout then presents the information to the growers, who use it as they see fit.

An emerging risk-management tool

After two years, Boldt says he has enough data to begin to see trends. Although the program has only increased the average return to growers slightly, it has significantly reduced the amount growers could lose should a pest or fertility problem go unchecked.

Among the problems caught were high armyworms populations, failure of an aerial applicator to topdress nitrogen fertilizer as determined by a chlorophyll meter and sheath blight infestations above the economic threshold levels.

The high-end yields in the IPM and non-IPM fields were not significantly different. But the difference between the high and low range was much less in the IPM fields than in the non-IPM fields.

"We saved them a little money, but we helped them prevent low yields in some fields," Boldt says. "You can call it risk management if you want to. By checking these fields, it helps farmers prevent problems that cause these low, bottom-end yields.

"If these farmers really put a dollar value on their time if they were doing it themselves, then I think it's a sizable investment. Basically, it helps farmers prevent wrecks."

Unexpected sheath blight

Like most of the participating growers, Doguet only enrolled one of his fields and used it as a gauge for his other ground. Should the scout find a problem in the IPM field, Doguet would then check his other fields.

After three to four weeks of sunny weather last year, Doguet says sheath blight was the last thing on his mind. But when the scout told Doguet that 30 percent to 40 percent of the stops in the field he checked were positive for sheath blight, the China grower took note.

"I didn't even really check for sheath blight because the conditions weren't right for it," he says. "But after the scout told me about the presence of sheath blight in my IPM field, I went out and found it in other fields."

, He ended up treating 50 percent to 60 percent of his fields for sheath blight.

Doguet says he's also learned from the scout, who identifies specific weeds causing problems. This has helped the China producer fine-tune his herbicide program to better target the offending weeds.

Scouting takes time

Bauer grows Jefferson, Cypress and Gulfmont and enrolls one field of each variety in the program. Should the scout find a problem in his Jefferson IPM field, for example, Bauer then checks his other, non-IPM Jefferson fields.

During an initial survey for sheath blight last year, the scout found what Bauer would call low levels--the disease was there but below the economic threshold. A subsequent survey showed the fungal problem had increased above the economic threshold level.

Bauer also credits the scout with taking the time needed to properly scout the field and being up to date on the latest pest thresholds. If the scout runs into a problem, he or she can draw on the experts at the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station in Beaumont.

"For me personally, the biggest thing is I don't have the time to go out and scout everything like I should," says Bauer, who chairs the Jefferson County Rice IPM Steering Committee. "And I'm not trained. I'd have to spend a lot of time retraining myself every year."