Texas Pest Management Association

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About Texas Pest Managment Association

Texas IPM Units are located in various key crop regions of the state.

Texas Pest Management Association (TPMA) is the only statewide, multi-commodity, non-profit, producer organization in Texas dedicated to the development and implementation of Integrated Pest Management (IPM) programs. IPM programs in Texas have provided increased profitability and environmental stability for agriculture through research, education and application.

Texas IPM programs are conducted as a public/private partnership and cooperative effort between TPMA, Texas Cooperative Extension, and the Texas Department of Agriculture (TDA). IPM units are located in key cropping regions of the state and address a wide range of pest problems across major agricultural crops.

The Goals

The goals of the organization are:

To encourage the implementation of pest management practices.
To coordinate pest management activities across the state.
To help growers organize into pest management units.
To serve as a liaison between cooperating state and federal agencies.
To develop state and national assistance for growers' pest management activities.
To provide a grower viewpoint on environmental concerns.

The Program

The TPMA statewide IPM program:

Teaches pest identification skills and pest management action thresholds;
Provides technical guidance and support for biological monitoring activities;
Teaches the appropriate mix and use of resistant plants, cultural practices, agricultural chemicals and biological control agents to control pests; and,
Uses a variety of mass media techniques to provide IPM information.

TPMA represents over 2,500 growers of cotton, grain sorghum, wheat, peanuts, citrus, vegetables, corn, alfalfa, soybeans and sunflowers. The organization also cooperates with 12 commodity organizations and maintains 22 integrated pest management units throughout the state. The information developed by the IPM program reaches over 8,500 growers, and acreage in the counties covered by this information dissemination is approximately 10,125,000. TPMA monitors a million acres twice a week.

The IPM database is the crucial informational source upon which the Texas IPM program operates. TPMA employs approximately 100 field monitors each season to collect critical information to help farmers in making crop pest and management decisions. Fiscal management of these funds is provided by TPMA for each of the 22 IPM units.

Over 18 million pieces of data on nearly one million acres of crops are collected each year to form the TPMA IPM database. Information on pest abundance, distribution and damage, levels of natural enemies, weather conditions, and soil fertility levels is critical to TPMA producer members. The organization shares its IPM database with fellow farm growers and agribusiness, TCE, the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station, TDA, the USDA and other states. Through IPM educational programs, Texas Cooperative Extension has multiplied the use of the TPMA database to provide information to producers farming nearly 4 million acres of crops.