Red Tomato IPM Working Group: Overview

Communicating IPM Benefits to Consumers

Apple growers in the Northeast are hungry for ways to differentiate their products and improve their market share and financial return. Their survival depends on it. The combination of consumer interest in health and safety, a demand for local Northeast apples, and a lack of commercial organic apple production in the Northeast creates the foundation for developing a differentiated product that will obtain a price premium and capture consumer loyalty. The key to rewarding growers for their innovative and often risky adoption of advanced IPM practices lies in building demand in the marketplace for advanced IPM farm products. Building demand requires the education of

(i) trade buyers (the gatekeepers to the supermarket and food service industries),

(ii) store-level department managers (the service providers who interact with shoppers), and

(iii) consumers, the ultimate spark and source of demand.

In this project, Red Tomato will develop educational/promotional vehicles for its Eco-Apple program, targeted primarily at the buying public. Because organic apples are next to impossible to raise in the northeastern United States at a supermarket volume and quality standard, advanced IPM offers an extraordinary opportunity to provide millions of shoppers who are searching for the best locally-grown produce available, with earth-friendly, advanced-IPM (certified), Northeast apples. Red Tomato, a non-profit organization, will convene and coordinate an IPM Working Group including apple growers, agricultural scientists and extension agents, and its own in-house team of salespeople, communications manager, and art director. The close working relationship among growers, scientists, and marketers adds unusual depth and practicality to this project.

Principal outcomes will be educational and promotional materials which will feature northeastern Eco-Apples raised to advanced IPM standards and certified by RT as “ecologically grown.” The materials will be used and disseminated through a variety of channels, including the media, by store-level produce managers, and by RT employees in daily sales and education work during 2007.

The Working Group - The Red Tomato IPM Working Group consists of 25 stakeholders from 7 Northeastern states-PA, MA, ME, NH, VT, CT, NY.  Its members include 12 Northeast apple growers, 9 researchers and extension agents, an IPM crop consultant, and Thomas Green, President of the IPM Institute of North America-plus convener Michael Rozyne and RT consultant Susan Futrell, Communications.  Working Group members include:

Michael Rozyne, Managing Director, Red Tomato
Susan Futrell, Communications Manager, Red Tomato
John Lyman, Lyman Orchards, Middlefield, Conn.
Homer Dunn, Alyson's Apple Orchard, Walpole, N.H.
Aaron Clark, Clark Bros. Orchard, Ashfield, Mass.
Zeke Goodband, Scott Farm, Dummerston, Vt.
Michael Biltonen, Stone Ridge Orchard, Stone Ridge, N.Y.
Barney Hodges, Sunrise Orchards, Cornwall, Vt.
Bob Rigdon, Apple Acres, Lafayette, N.Y.
Calvin Beekman, Beekman Orchards, Boyertown, Penn.
Peter Ten Eyck, Indian Ladder Farms, Altamont, N.Y.
Glenn Schreiter, Saxtons River Orchards, Saxtons River, Vt.
Steve Meyerhans, Apple Farm, Fairfield, Maine
Vito Truncali, Truncali Orchards, Marlboro, N.Y.
Richard Bonanno, PhD, Pleasant Valley Garden, Methuen, Mass.
Jon Clements, Extension tree fruit specialist, UMass, Amherst, Mass.
Arthur Tuttle, MS, Extension IPM field leader, plant pathology, UMass, Amherst, Mass.
William Coli, PhD, Extension specialist, UMass, Amherst, Mass.
Daniel R. Cooley, Associate Professor of Plant Pathology, UMass, Amherst, Mass.
Juliet Carroll, PhD, Fruit IPM Coordinator, NYSIPM Program, Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y.
Thomas A. Green, PhD, CCA, TSP,  IPM Institute of North America, Madison, Wisconsin
Harvey Reissig, Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y.
Art Agnello, NYSAES, Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y.
Rob Koch, crop consultant, Apple Leaf, Kingston, N.Y.
Greg Krawczyk, Extension Tree Fruit Entomologist, Penn State University, Biglerville, Penn.