Each growing season brings challenging pest management decisions. Spring is finally here, and it's a sure thing that new and old pests will make themselves known. You will be able to informatively react to developing pest situations by making plans to have your fields scouted. Regular scouting will give you the initial information you need about pest presence and subsequent population growth that you need to make environmentally sound management decisions.

Many of your pest management decisions are already locked in for the season. Endemic pests have led the vast majority of producers make pre-season pest management plans through the selection of varieties with traditional resistance traits, genetically modified resistance traits, and additionally, herbicide programs driven by that variety selection. Given all of this pre-season planning, why bother to scout in season?

Mother Nature provides a lot of reasons to scout. First, there is most certainly not genetic resistance to all of the pests that affect our field crops. These 'other' pests need to be monitored. You can make economically viable decisions about whether you really need to apply in-season fungicide or insecticide treatments.

Next, it is important to remember that resistance does not mean immunity, some portion of the pest population will survive and successfully reproduce and these populations need to be monitored. Also, pest populations have a solid history of being able to overcome or adapt to traditional or genetically modified resistant varieties. Given your financial investment in current varieties and pesticide programs, scouting provides some ground truth about effectiveness of your pre-season decisions and variety selection. And finally, scouting findings can give you confidence in pre-planning for next season.

A lot of options exist for who can scout your fields. Certainly, you can take it upon yourself to obtain training in pest identification and management and do your own scouting. Many agribusiness representatives may also offer to scout your fields as a part of their service or as an added enticement for you to do business with their company. Professional scouts and consultants can proficiently provide this service for a fee. Regardless of who does the scouting, producers should maintain their own expertise on pests so they can make informed decisions about treatment based on scouting reports or their own field observations. University of Illinois Extension Specialists and Educators provide timely pest information in the 'Bulletin' an excellent in- season printed and online source of scouting, management and pest reports. Find it at http://www.ipm.uiuc.edu/bulletin/.