Perspectives towards collective action for pest and disease management in vineyards in the western United States

Authors: LOWDER, SARAH - Oregon State University; MOYER, MICHELLE - Washington State University; COOPER, MONICA - University Of California - Cooperative Extension Service; PSCHEIDT, JAY - Oregon State University; Mahaffee, Walter - Walt

Submitted to: PhytoFrontiers
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 11/10/2023
Publication Date: 2/26/2024
Citation: Lowder, S.R., Moyer, M.M., Cooper, M.L., Pscheidt, J., Mahaffee, W.F. 2024. Perspectives towards collective action for pest and disease management in vineyards in the western United States. PhytoFrontiers. https://doi.org/10.1094/PHYTOFR-07-23-0082-R.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1094/PHYTOFR-07-23-0082-R

Interpretive Summary: Sometimes pests and diseases have an epidemiological range that is larger than an individual field or farm. How one grower in a region responds to that pest and disease can influence the disease control of others in the region. Collective action strategies can help align these responses but the potential participant’s opinions about whether they want to participate in implementing these strategies are going to influence the success of the collective action. This work uses a Q-method survey to examine the opinions and priority of those opinions in grape growers in the western US. Overall, participants felt positive about potential collective action, but were more concerned about their own individual pest and disease management concerns. Four different archetypes, or perspectives, emerged that explained significantly more of the variance among responses than the demographics typically used to target our reach efforts. These result indicate that outreach professionals could design materials customized the archtypes to increase the likelihood of potential collective management action adoption.

Technical Abstract: An individual grower’s response to pests and diseases in their vineyard can have consequences for an entire growing region. Collective action strategies can help align grower responses to achieve better regional disease control. The ways in which we identify, approach, and address farm manager opinions regarding cooperative management efforts can influence the success of collective action strategies. A Q-method survey was conducted to investigate the adoption obstacles of wine grape growers to regionally collective actions for managing vineyard pests and diseases. Qualitative information from wine grape (n = 17) from the Pacific Northwest was used to generate 36 statements describing their opinions on collective management action and general disease and pest management. Next, a second set of grape producers (n = 59) were asked to rank these collected opinions (statements) relative to each other. Participants perceived that collective management action would be worth the extra associated time or costs. Four prominent archetypal perspectives arose from the Q-method analysis explaining 66% of the variance in expressed opinions. Archetypes were termed, “The Cooperators" (14 of 59), “The Quasi-Individualists" (9 of 59), “The Mid-Level Pragmatists” (8 of 59), and “The Bottom-Line Focused” (5 of 59). These groups were split across the demographic information that was collected; their archetypes explained more of the variation between responses than their associated demographic information. Overall, participants were likely to agree that cooperation was important, but they were more concerned about their individual vineyard economic and crop health concerns. Thus, suggesting that if Extension and outreach professionals want to increase the likelihood of grape grower participate in collective pest management actions, they should emphasize the individual benefits of participation.