 Integrated Pest Management basically means taking appropriate measures that discourage the development of pest populations and keeping pesticides and other interventions to levels that are economically justified and reduces or minimizes risk to human health and the environment. IPM or Integrated Pest Management means that there has been a policy put in place so that people won't over apply or overuse pesticides thus incurring additional or unneeded cost plus on top of that if you over apply then there is a greater need for the environment to be impacted and by that I mean you know pesticides you know or even herbicides but for this point pesticides may leach out into the environment whereas if you didn't apply more than needed then that wouldn't happen or it would be a lesser chance of that happening. The Cooperative Extension Service we are a service that provides education to the public so we are an educating entity much like yourselves. We educate the public on anything from pest management, family consumer science, 4-H horticulture so my job is really broad I'm an agricultural technician and the Extension Service is comprised of NC State University and NC ANT State University. I'm on the ANT State University side and what my position with the Extension Service at ANT based on my responsibilities are the agricultural technician is responsible for providing one-on-one on-farm assistance to persons engaged in small-scale agriculture. The technician also assists the small and or part-time farmer in identifying and solving their home farm and community problems. The area of responsibility includes but is not limited to animal science, horticulture, farm management, natural resources and general activities and programs designed to strengthen the family farm. I work with small and limited or small and part-time farmers that's my mandate through ANT State University but whomever calls, whomever has a question, you know an internet question, whomever comes in the office with the question we try to assist them because right now with our office we don't have a horticulture agent so I'm assisting our Extension Director in answering in a horticulture questions, consuming horticulture and some real crop questions as well like dealing with soybean, wheat, cotton, corn, tobacco as well. Basically I communicate through email, through news articles, one-on-one on-farm visits, answering phone calls and also we do workshops too. I grew up on a family farm and interest started there. I saw the advertisement in the newspapers and didn't really know exactly what I was applying for but once I was hired actually I had a lot of extensive trainings and workshops from horticulture to ophthalmology, a little crop science, so basically my position you don't have to have a four-year degree or a master's degree. So basically the most of my training has been on the job training and seminars and workshops. I would advise anyone interested in a career in Extension to actually take a course in Extension themselves and then depending upon what field they want to be in or what job they want to be in, whether it's a 4-H agent, whether it's a family consumer science agent, court agent or specialist, even an agricultural technician. The basis of knowing exactly what Extension is about will help them a great deal.