Forestry Management Instructor Presents at National IPM Symposium and Forest Industry Workshop

Hamilton addresses pesticide safety with Hispanic crew

Haywood Community College’s Dr. Jim Hamilton joined over 650 scientists, academics, agency personnel, and international organizations in St. Louis, Missouri to share innovations that lead to a safer food supply, enhance human health and improve environment through Integrated Pest Management or IPM. He led a workshop at the 5th National IPM Symposium, held April 4-6th. With over 23 countries represented, the program included mini-symposia, workshops, roundtable sessions and social events that addressed challenges to educate the public about the importance of integrated pest management—an environmentally sensitive approach to pest management that relies on a combination of common-sense practices that can be applied to both agricultural and non-agricultural settings. Hamilton’s workshop entitled “Training Hispanic Workers and Growers in IPM: Case Studies from the Field” highlighted his experience with developing a pest scouting program with Hispanic workers in North Carolina’s Christmas tree industry. Naná Simone from Wenatchee, Washington co-presented, sharing methods for training Hispanic farmers and orchard owners about fruit-tree pest identification and control. Industry representatives, EPA program personnel, and extension agents attended the workshop.

Hamilton was also recently a speaker and panelist at a workshop in Princeton, West Virginia for the forest products industry, March 27-28th. The workshop “Managing and Understanding the Hispanic Workforce” was organized by Virginia Tech’s Sloan Foundation Forest Industries Center to provide forest industry employers necessary tools to improve safety, productivity, and communication with their increasingly Hispanic workforce. He was invited to speak on “Job Safety in a Multicultural Workplace”. Before joining the faculty of Haywood Community College’s Natural Resources Division, Hamilton worked extensively on a pesticide safety education program with Hispanic farmworkers as an extension agent in Watauga County.