Lesson 11 – A Day in the Life of Scouts and a PCA

Presentation Recording

Presenters

Jessica Vaughan, Vaughan Consulting, is a crop scout and former organic greenhouse grower on the Central Coast and owns Vaughan Grower Consulting. Since 2020, Jessica has been scouting organic vegetables, berries, and cut flowers, helping farmers capture and use on-farm data to improve farm productivity. Jessica is working on a Master of Science in Agriculture at Washington State University while scouting fields daily and training as many farmers and scouts as possible in practical and sustainable crop scouting methods.

Doug O’Brien is full-time farming herbs and specialty fruit in Santa Cruz at Pleasure Point Farm, and scouting vegetable farms part-time. Doug operated an on-farm consulting company for 28 years. He taught organic farming at Cabrillo College for six years. He was the co-owner of, and field rep for, United Organic Growers, Inc, an organic produce brokerage company. He has a bachelor’s degree in agriculture, and M.S. and Ph.D degrees in plant pathology.

Jim Davis, owner of BetterBugs IPM LLC, attended Oberlin College, receiving his Bachelor Degree in Biology. In 1984 he graduated from the Masters Program in Agricultural Pest Management at the University of California, Riverside. Jim has been a licensed PCA and an active field scout since 1984. His professional focus has been concentrated on the use of beneficial insects and designing IPM programs, which has led to experience in citrus, avocados, vegetables, cut flowers, turf, ornamentals, and nursery production. He also has given many educational presentations on the identification and use of beneficial insects to groups of farmers, pest control advisors and applicators, gardening clubs, and students of all ages.

Upon successfully completing this lesson, participants will be able to:

• Explain key principles and benefits of whole farm scouting in terms of methodology, goals, and relationship with the farmer
• Describe several aspects of scouting efficiently and effectively and how to "Look far, Look near, and Look close" to assess field conditions
• Share how to determine treatment thresholds that allow beneficial organisms to build populations
• Describe how to determine compatibility of pesticides with beneficials when making suggestions

Scouting Template

• Google sheet from Jessica Vaughan

UC ANR Publications

• IPM for Cole Crops and Lettuce
• Integrated Pest Management for Strawberries
• IPM for Tomatoes
• UC ANR Natural Enemies Handbook
• UC ANR IPM in Practice

Video