 I'm Rich Moses. I'm from Eagle Bridge, New York and we run this farm called Moses Farm. We farm currently about 90 acres and 65 acres of that is sweet corn. We retail about 75% of our produce right here through our roadside stand. For the past three years we've hired a consultant to do our pest management and do our scouting for us. We're spending several thousand dollars a year to do this. Having a scout hasn't necessarily led to a decrease in expenses. In fact, maybe our expenses are going up slightly. But I do know that the timing of our sprays has been better. The results, the quality of the product we're putting out on the counter has improved. And we've discovered that we've found some problems early on that maybe we wouldn't have otherwise and have addressed those problems accordingly. I'm Dale Riggs. I'm a crop consultant here in eastern New York. With sweet corn what I provide for services is running pheromone traps for both corn borer and corn earworm. Scouting services where I'm out in the field looking for what's actually in the field at the appropriate time. And then for mostly growers I also make recommendations based on what I'm finding in the fields. I make sure the corn borer traps get put up in the proper location. That tends to be grassy areas. I try to not put them under trees but a nice open area where the moths are mating in the evenings. For corn earworm traps they need to go in fresh silking corn. And I therefore need to move those traps every week so that they're always in fresh silking corn. When I know that corn borer is active I go out and physically scout the field looking for the numbers of plants that are damaged and then I give a percent damage to the grower. When I go out and scout the field I scout in either a V or an X or a W pattern so that I'm able to get a representative sample of what's actually out there in the field. What I'm looking for is in general about 15% of the plants having insects in them. What we would consider to be the threshold level at which point it's then economical to go out and make an application to control these insects. With the corn earworm traps I'm looking for actual numbers. I don't need to go out and scout the field and I base my spray recommendations based on how many moths are in the trap on a weekly basis and the temperatures. One of the things we've tried in the past couple of years has been the Trichogramma wasp which is a very, very tiny wasp that's released into the field at the proper time and when they hatch out they seek out the egg mass of the European corn borer and will parasitize that egg mass so that the eggs do not hatch. What I'm doing is weekly or twice a month releases of these Trichogramma wasps and I just get these little cups that the wasps are in these as pupae. They emerge in the field and they crawl out through these little holes in this paper cup. I put them out in a diagonal or X pattern in the field just simply tie this cup to the corn leaf and then a couple days later often within one day the Trichogramma wasps will emerge out of these cups. Then they go searching for the egg masses of the European corn borer, lay their eggs in the egg masses and they'll turn black if they're parasitized, they'll turn black in about three days and then usually about 10 days after that the new wasps will emerge out of these egg masses. The species of wasp we're using is called Trichogramma oestrinia. It's very effective against European corn borer in the field so that's why we're using this species. This is experimental but if this does work, if we're finding good results there's potential for this to be these wasps to be commercially produced. We're a conventional farm in that we spray according to the threshold levels of certain insects in sweet corn but the Trichogramma wasp has given us another tool to work with. We used a little bit last year and discovered we had some great results and decided to expand the use of it this year hoping that in the long run we can eliminate some of our early sweet corn sprays for European corn borer.