2019 Crop Protection Network Impact

Mission Statement

The Crop Protection Network (CPN) is a multi-state and international collaboration of university/provincial extension specialists and public/private professionals who provide unbiased, research-based information to farmers and agricultural personnel.

Below, we highlight our activities in 2019.

Activities

In 2019, we:

• Launched an online tool for calculating yield and economic losses due to disease in corn and soybean for user-defined diseases, years, and geographic locations

• Launched an online tool allowing Certified Crop Advisors to earn continuing education units for successfully passing exams that correspond to CPN publications

• Published national fungicide efficacy guides for corn, soybean, and wheat

• Developed a new Research Update publication series where complex scientific manuscripts are rewritten to be accessible by non-scientists

• Began a webinar series on crop protection topics

• Administered a survey for Extension specialists to measure the impact of CPN. Results indicate CPN increased value and impact of information provided to stakeholders; participation in publication production with CPN saved time and money; and extension client knowledge and behavior change occurred.

• Implemented the “Defend your yields. Protect your fields.” social media and video campaigns on Twitter and YouTube.

By the Numbers

In 2019:

• The CPN created 2 publications for the Research Update series.

• The CPN created or updated 6 publications for the Corn, Soybean, and Small Grain Disease Management series.

• The CPN created 2 publications for the Disease Loss Estimates series.

• The CPN published 6 Feature Articles on the CPN website.

• The CPN website had more than 81,600 unique page views. Approximately 60,000 publication downloads occurred.

• The top 5 publications downloaded on the CPN website in 2019 were (in order):

  • Fungicide Efficacy for Control of Soybean Foliar Diseases (CPN-1020)

  • Tar Spot (CPN-2012)

  • Southern Rust (CPN-2009)

  • Fungicide Efficacy for Control of Soybean Seedling Diseases (CPN-1020)

  • Fungicide Efficacy for Corn Diseases (CPN-2011)

• More than 1,500 continuing education unit (CEU) exams were attempted, awarding nearly 600 CEUs to Certified Crop Advisers.

• Since inception, the CPN has captured input from 125 specialists from 31 U.S. states and Ontario, Canada