CABI: Partners in IPM

Food security is at the heart of why integrated pest management (IPM) matters.

Although IPM has a critical role to play in many contexts—including residential and commercial structural settings—one of the main reasons it’s critical to develop and deploy effective and sustainable means of managing pests is the havoc they can wreak on the food supply. This is especially true of invasive species, which have little in the way of natural enemies in their novel environments.

Organizations that specialize in IPM, like the regional IPM centers and state IPM programs, partner with numerous other organizations with related or overlapping purviews to achieve our shared goals.

One such organization is CABI, an international, intergovernmental, not-for-profit whose mission includes “improving people’s lives worldwide by providing information and applying scientific expertise to solve problems in agriculture and the environment.” (www.cabi.org/about-cabi/)

CABI currently includes 48 member countries and recognizes that we have the tools to take on global issues such as hunger and poverty, but in order to achieve meaningful results and improve lives, the relevant expertise needs to be applied where it is needed most.

CABI seeks to accomplish this by sharing knowledge and science-based methods to help farmers grow more and lose less of what they do grow, whether those losses are at the hands of pests, diseases, or insufficient dissemination of critical knowledge.

CABI maintains extensive online resources, including:

• CABI BioProtection Portal (bioprotectionportal.com), a searchable database that includes biopesticides and biocontrol agents.
• CABI Digital Library (www.cabidigitallibrary.org), hosting millions of research records across agriculture, the environment, human health, and applied life sciences to support study, research, and practical applications around the world.
• CABI Academy (www.cabi.org/products-and-services/academy/), which brings together CABI’s expertise in crop health, agricultural advisory services, and digital development to create a range of online training courses and certifications that develop and build plant-health skills.

Learn more about CABI at: www.cabi.org