b'If we want to do our best as a province to avoid or manage or deal with these issues, we have to measure them, he says. If we Entering a Field: The Process dont have a measurement of where were at with pests, weeds and diseases, we wont know if theyre getting worse or getting better.When Mike Harding pulls up to a field, its alwaysEach year, the crop survey window lasts about one month, in his marked Alberta Agriculture and Irrigationbeginning in July with peas, wheat and barley, and ending in vehicle. Its always during the day, too, so its clearAugust-September with wheat heads and canola. Surveys in large hes not a sketchy character. acreage field crops such as wheat and canola will typically involve Before entering a field, he safely pulls off to theanywhere between 300 to 500 fields each year. Other crops like pea side of the road and dons his necessary PPE. Thisand barley will target around 100 fields. Not every crop is evaluated usually includes single-use gloves and bright blueevery year, so there may be no visits to fields of corn, oat or potato in booties. Sometimes he wears other biosafetya given year.equipment, as required. All of this is done to avoidEvery field he enters, Harding follows the exact same strict bringing any biological contaminants onto a farm. protocols (see sidebar). Once inside the field, he sometimes clips the leaves, heads, or seed pods if they appear diseased. In other cases, His entire inspection lasts no more than 20 to 40such as a root disease, he will remove a few plants in their entirety, minutes, and he rarely goes more than 50 metresplace them into individual bags and leave. into a field.Sometimes his junior employees simply bag samples and bring them back to the lab for analysis, or a representative of the local municipality, such as an agricultural fieldman from the county or municipal district. In most cases, he estimates the relatively small amount of sample collection results in between five and 10 cents of damage. Were not removing economic levels of crop from the field, he says. Youd have to take a lot more plants than we do to cause any real measurable damage.For other inspectors or researchers, such as entomologists, they set up traps and check them on a regular basis. Other times they walk into a field with a sweep net to catch certain insects. Sampling can be both destructive or non-destructive, depending on the situation or focus of a survey. Weed scientists would almost invariably remove entire plants to study them in the lab, although at times only sections of a weed may be removed for classification and examination. So, why do these plant health specialists make unannounced visits to agricultural fields? Harding says its because good data and information must come from random and representative sampling. Just like a good soil sample must be random and representative, pest surveillance and monitoring must make stops randomly in representative numbers of fields to provide quality information on pest situations, he explains. We always contact landowners when its possible, but notifications for random visits to 500 fields across the entire province is not feasible. In his career, hes recalls three negative encounters with landowners. Most times he never sees the landowner and, the times he has, the interactions are overwhelmingly positive. Most producers understand the importance of what we do, and often have lots of questions about managing specific pest issues on their farm, which we are always happy to discuss and provide information about.Kelly Turkington, a federal plant pathologist based in Lacombe, Alta.10seed.ab.ca'