Integration and Integrity in IPM: The Legacy of Leo Dale Newsom (1915–1987)

American Entomologist • Fall 2013 I had the privilege to give the Founders’ Memorial Lecture honoring Dr. Leo Dale Newsom in December of 2000 at the joint meeting of the Entomological Societies of America and Canada in Montreal. For most of my professional life, I shared with Dale Newsom both an interest in soybean IPM and the belief that “integration” was the key factor in the IPM concept; those topics were the focus of my original presentation. Much has changed in soybean IPM in the intervening 12 years since that event, and integration still remains a remote goal in IPM teaching, research, and extension. Last year marked the 25th anniversary of Dale Newsom’s death. By rekindling the message conveyed in that lecture, I hope to reassert principles that, in my view, remain critical for the future of IPM, and, in so doing, provide a more lasting tribute to this admirable entomologist. In the historical path of a branch of science, technology, or the humanities, there are moments when a new finding, invention, idea, or worldview brings about a qualitative leap. Andrew Grove, former CEO of the Intel Corporation, called these occurrences “strategic inflection points,” further describing them as “those moments when new circumstances alter the way the world works, as if the current of history goes through a transistor and our oscilloscopes blip” (Grove 1996). During the lifetime of Dr. Leo Dale Newsom, crop protection was transformed by two such inflection points: the discovery of DDT and the rise of Integrated Pest Management (IPM). DDT, as a single discovery, was a tactical weapon that drastically changed the fight against insect pests in the second half of the 20 century. IPM as an idea, a process, and a collection of technological advances was a significant strategic inflection point in the agricultural sciences of the fourth quarter of the century (Kogan 1998, Kogan and McGrath 1994). Newsom was an active participant in the early days and throughout the expansion of those two strategic inflection points in crop protection’s history. When DDT began to be used for peacetime applications in 1946, Newsom was a graduate student at Cornell University. He tested the new insecticide in agricultural pest control and was one of the first to call attention to DDT’s destruction of natural enemies. When the concept of Integration and Integrity in IPM