275: Pest Friends: The IPM Simulator Changing How Farmers Think

Pest Friends is a hands-on simulation that helps farmers make smarter Integrated Pest Management (IPM) decisions—by making the field a game board. Grant Loomis and Jason Thomas, Extension Educators with the University of Idaho, created Pest Friends to help players experience the real-life consequences of pest control. Players manage population dynamics, reacting to pest pressures, and decide when—and if—to intervene with pesticides, habitat modifications, or beneficial insect support. It’s not just educational—it’s a window into how people think about pest management.

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Transcript

farmers make smarter integrated pest management decisions by making the field a game board.

[00:00:10] Welcome to Sustainable Wine Growing with Vineyard Team, where we bring you the latest in science and research for the wine industry. I'm Beth Vukmanic, executive director.

[00:00:20] In today's podcast, Craig Macmillan, critical resource manager at Niner Wine Estates with a longtime SIP Certified vineyard. And the first ever SIP ertified winery speaks with Grant Loomis and Jason Thomas, both extension educators with the University of Idaho. Together they have created Pest riends to help players experience the real life consequences of pest control.

[00:00:46] Players manage population dynamics, reacting to pest pressures, and decide when and if to intervene with pesticides, habitat modifications or beneficial insect support. It's not just educational, it's a window into how people think about pest management.

[00:01:06] Earlier this year, Grant and I had the opportunity to be part of a panel reviewing Western SARE professional development grants. It was a wonderful experience to read about the innovative projects farmers and educators are working on across the region. Plus, I walked away with the opportunity to share this Pest riend games with you.

[00:01:26] If you would like to give this game a try, please email me at podcast@vineyardteam.org. We'd love to set up a game

[00:01:33] And speaking of more education, if you need department A Pesticide regulation or certified crop advisor hours, we released online courses so that you can earn those hours on demand. Go to vineyard team.org and click online courses. To get signed up.

[00:01:52] Now let's listen in.

[00:01:55] Craig Macmillan: Our guests today are Grant Loomis. He is an extension educator with the University of Idaho in Blaine County. And Jason Thomas, who is also an extension educator with the University of Idaho, and he is in Minidoka County. Thanks for being on the episode. Thanks for being on the podcast.

[00:02:10] Jason Thomas: Yeah, thanks for having us. Excited to be here.

[00:02:13] Craig Macmillan: Well, today we're gonna talk about something really creative and really interesting that I just had the, the privilege of participating in, and I found it to be really insightful and kind of eye-opening, and that is the Pest Friends game. Grant, let's start with you. What is the Pest Friends game?

[00:02:33] Grant Loomis: Yeah, so Pest Friends is a very unique , and challenging board game. Jason Thomas, my colleague here through the Covid time, I had just started my position and he thought to himself. Grant just started. He probably has , no idea what he's doing with his life right now. And he had this idea in the back of his mind of creating a board game to educate about pest management and how could we integrate this fun concept into our jobs where we're out in our communities providing education on topics like this, around agriculture.

[00:03:14] And so rather, I don't know if I am. Blindly trusted Jason or just had no good ideas, but I said, yeah, that sounds fun. That's that's something that I'm really interested in. And from then we spent the next couple of years, just going back with ideas that Jason had come up with going back and forth on, does this work, does that work? Is this too hard? Is this too easy?

[00:03:43] Jason likes to play the side of making things really hard and challenging and leaving people to their own devices to fail. And I find myself wanting to, to see players have a little bit more fun than walking away than with a frustration of failure. But that's kind of the genesis of past friends

[00:04:03] A lot of the intricate pieces of how it became what it is now, and the creation , of the, the metrics of, how that was done was done by Jason. He used some spreadsheets to check how , the predator and prey curves over time. How, how that would go on in a growing season and how does that compare to reality that we see in agriculture.

[00:04:29] Craig Macmillan: thank you. Jason, would it be fair to say this, game is a integrated pest management simulation? 'cause that's kind of how it felt to me.

[00:04:36] Jason Thomas: Yeah. So the purpose of the game is to simulate what is happening in a crop field over the course of a growing season. And basically the simulation is to simulate population dynamics. So in your field you have plants growing. You also have other insects and things in there as well.

[00:04:54] So we tried to create a population model that you could. Have players interact with and experience consequences for different decisions. So when you're playing the game, you're gonna encounter significant pests, some minor pests, and potentially predators as well.

[00:05:10] And so players are going to have to react to those and figure out what to do. And the crux of the whole game is to try and, in many ways, figure out what people's pest management strategies are or what their mindsets are. That way then we can try to help them have better thought processes or paradigms in terms of pest management. Because as much as the game teaches you, it's also a litmus test to let you learn about the person and why they make the decisions they do in terms of pest management.

[00:05:39] To me, the whole reason why we created the game is I wanted people to be able to interact with those types of models and see what happens. Whether they're successful or they fail, or doing it multiple times to figure out how the system works in a setting where it's not a high risk, right?

[00:05:55] Because they're playing with fake money, either as a board game or on the computer, right? They're using money that doesn't exist working in a crop that doesn't exist, working with insects that don't exist. But the principles that are built into the game are based on reality, right? Of the different types of things that are gonna be occurring when you're managing pests.

[00:06:13] Craig Macmillan: Just to kind of summarize, the, the player is a pest manager and that's the only area of the crop they have to worry about,

[00:06:22] Jason Thomas: Yep. That's basically all we have them do. And then that way they're not worrying about other stuff because that was a early on thing that we experienced is that they were like, oh, I have to water the crops 'cause it's July and it's really hot. And it's like, well you don't have to worry about that, that's being taken care of by another team or another group.

[00:06:38] We just wanna focus on one. Principle of, okay, just think about pest management and set those other things to the side for a minute.

[00:06:46] Craig Macmillan: And this farming group, this is a fictitious group. It's not another group of players.

[00:06:49] Jason Thomas: Yeah, there, there's not another group of players, that is one of my like bucket list things that I'd like to do is having multiple different groups of players, somebody running the agronomy, somebody running finances, and somebody running. Pest management,

[00:07:01] it's just gonna take a lot of play testing and a lot of work because all those pieces have to interconnect. But to me, I love those types of messy situations where people are fighting over, oh, well I need to, I need these inputs for fertilizer. But then the pest management guy's like, no, but I need this, and you're gonna increase the pest for this. So just that back and forth, the messiness of how complicated farming is, I enjoy those types of simulations or those types of games,

[00:07:25] so I'm not. You know, the type of person who enjoys playing Uno and things that are just kind of brainless. But I enjoy things where there's no right or wrong answer. You do your best. You're trying to figure it out.

[00:07:36] Craig Macmillan: So this is like a training education piece. You have to think in terms of integrated pest management. Philosophies, the decisions that you make impact what the pest populations are in the field and how much damage they do to your crop.

[00:07:48] You have essentially here a scenario where the person is the pest manager. They can take certain actions that'll have impacts on the pest. It could also have impacts on the natural enemies, and that will have impacts on the crops. What's the scenario here? So when I come into the game, what's the cropping system that I'm looking at and how do I interact with the cropping system? Grant, you wanna take that one?

[00:08:12] Grant Loomis: The object as we approached what crop we designed this around was to utilize a space where we couldn't be wrong.

[00:08:21] And what I mean by that is information. Crop genetics are changing all the time. So if we base this around a specific crop, let's just use an example. We're from Idaho, so let's say the potato.

[00:08:36] Let's say we used the potato specifically , in this cropping, and we had not used something fictitious. There would be lots of experts, our own experts with our own organization telling us, Hey, you, you did this wrong in your simulation, in your model, because this actually doesn't happen in reality.

[00:08:52] The idea was that we want to approach this so that people can walk away with the principles of integrated pest management and apply it to their own crop.

[00:09:02] Now the cropping system that we did use is along the lines of an alfalfa or some kind of crop that would be grazed or harvested as a hay to be pretty generic.

[00:09:16] and we kind of used the label of lunar wheat, so it feels like it's outer space. Our assets. Are based on kind of alienesque creatures, which are just really fun and fascinating and just beautiful at the same time. When individuals play the game, they should walk away with , how am I gonna apply these principles to my own production system?

[00:09:39] How will I walk away from this example with a renewed knowledge of the principles that maybe I have forgotten to think about? What's the research that's out there on, on these real pests, on these real crops that I'm facing these challenges daily, if not on an annual basis, so that I can approach my whole system holistically and not just use one point of attack

[00:10:06] in the game. You're, you're posed with these options. These options give you an opportunity to lean on your own understanding. Maybe not read the research that we provide as an action in the game. And when individuals lean on their own understanding, we see that their success or their dollar end value is less because we all have our own assumptions. We all have our own biases or belief system that will influence how we attack a situation.

[00:10:33] To break that down and, and start over with that thought process of how do I think about this problem? Do I take it all the information I. am I going through this board game in such a hurry that I'm trying to get to lunch afterwards? Like, are we, are we in a big hurry at a conference and boy, I want to get done with this fun stuff for lunch. You know, those are some of the, I guess, human obstacles and, and playing the game, I.

[00:10:56] As we approach just problem solving, , that's the whole idea, is that individuals will take the information that either through their local extension, land grant, universities, professionals in their arena are giving them so that they can make better decisions and, and how do they thoughtfully approach those

[00:11:15] Craig Macmillan: So Jason, if you would can you walk us through what the actual game play and the timeline is like going through the game for us in like terms of the rounds and the, and the information you can get.

[00:11:26] Jason Thomas: Yeah, so basically the game is played over eight rounds and just for simplicity purposes, we call the rounds months, but there's obviously not a real crop out there that you're probably growing from March and then harvesting in October. But we just lay it out that way so they have some time to make decisions. See the consequences as they're unfolding over the rounds, because you may make a decision in the first round that will have consequences throughout the rest of the game, right? So there has to be time for those consequences to gradually be applied, right? So if you end up killing your predators in your field or something, then they get to experience that and see that occurring over time of what happens.

[00:12:04] And then at the end we kind of reveal everything to them so they're able to see what they did and what the consequences of their choices were.

[00:12:11] Craig Macmillan: I'm gonna come back to the mechanics of it in a second, , you're using this as an educational tool, right?

[00:12:16] Jason Thomas: Yeah, so this is basically a curriculum and we had to get this peer reviewed as well. So this has been peer reviewed by other folks that work in entomology and this is just like an official publication that would be produced from uc Davis, but from the University of Idaho. Right.

[00:12:31] There's been a lot of work put into this to create this and polish this into what we have today.

[00:12:36] Craig Macmillan: you actually sit down with pest control advisors and have them play the game and kinda observe what they do.

[00:12:42] Is this part of a larger data collection process? 'cause I think that part of it's fascinating. It's actually having professionals play this game. I.

[00:12:48] Jason Thomas: We do collect some data so when people are playing the game, we have access to that data. We can pull up any play through that's ever been done. So we do have that kind of data and we do see some trends and we're thinking about potentially, eventually looking at, okay, is there a trend, a certain age group?

[00:13:04] 'cause this game can be played by youth and by adults. We start with youth about. 12 years old or so is when we play this game, although we are working on a kid's version, which is a little bit more simplified. But that's something I would be really curious to see is if there's a certain age group where we're better able to influence someone's Pest management decisions or strategies or if there's a certain timeframe or maybe a specific gender is more or less likely to use pesticides just to kind of discover and learn more about the way people make decisions.

[00:13:35] Craig Macmillan: Yeah, , that's really neat.

[00:13:36] Jason, can you give us a again, kind of a walkthrough of , what the actual rounds are like? So I come in, I sit down, I've got this crop, this lunar wheat, and the game begins. In March, and then I have some choices I can make.

[00:13:52] Jason Thomas: You're taking on that role of a pest manager. The choices you'll make is you can scout either, you know, a simple scout, trying to just get a sample of what's going on in your field. You can do a more thorough scout, which costs some additional resources. You can research bugs. So as you're discovering new things in your field, you can research them to learn about them.

[00:14:11] You can also, you know, irrigate that field, add some more water, try to manipulate the habitat put some cows out on it, let them graze or use some different pesticides. Those are some of the different things you're doing, but these are all focused on different principles of integrated pest management, Right,

[00:14:27] Habitat modification pesticides, and gaining information in order to make better decisions. Those are integral in the game itself so that we can, you know, teach those concepts because we want them to make good decisions and be thinking in that way, right.

[00:14:44] Craig Macmillan: Right. And so when I played I think pretty much every round, the first thing that I did was scout. And I got a, a, a sample from the field. And the field is, if it's virtual, it's a computer, but the board game is a bag full of tiles essentially. And I get a sample of those and those could be either crop or pest or beneficial or natural enemy. And then I use that information to decide am I add an action threshold? And then also I've got the plant damage. So I can get healthy crop tiles, I can have damaged crop tiles, and I can have what was the last you called it? Devastated. Yeah.

[00:15:19] Jason Thomas: dead.

[00:15:21] Craig Macmillan: Devastated. I loved that. I thought that was terrible, but great at the same time. , So in a couple of cases I scouted and I had some healthy crop, but I also had quite a few relatively pest insects. And then in one round I did the normal scouting, but then I also did what was called super scouting.

[00:15:40] Jason Thomas: Yeah, thorough scout.

[00:15:41] Craig Macmillan: Thorough scout, thorough scouting, and I got a lot more information that way. And I also did research, so I didn't know anything about the Ian. Crawler, you know, it's a fictitious bug. So I got this nice little card that was kinda like an article out of a pest management handbook that thought was very clever. And it told me what the effect of pesticides would be on it. Like would it, would it take care of this pest or not, and what impact on beneficials it might have. And so I watched those populations over time, over a couple of rounds, and the pest population was getting pretty big. And so, if I remember correctly, I went ahead and I played the pesticide card

[00:16:20] Jason Thomas: Mm-hmm.

[00:16:21] Craig Macmillan: about halfway through, I think. And that changed the population dynamics pretty, pretty meaningfully. And then I kinda let it ride. And I, I, I think I did okay.

[00:16:30] Jason Thomas: Well, if you learned something, you did good because part of it too is you can't, you can't you can't say you did a super bad job because the tiles you pulled from your scouting might not have been the most representative. But that's pure random. if if it's a bag, there's no tactile nature to these tiles.

[00:16:46] You reach into the bag. And you pull out some tiles, right? , You made some good decisions along the way. I have a question for you. So now this is us, us talking to you

[00:16:55] Craig Macmillan: Please. Yeah. I'm the Guinea pig here.

[00:16:57] Jason Thomas: Why did you choose to use the cheap pesticide versus the more expensive one? Did you notice anything about those in the research or why did you make that decision?

[00:17:07] Craig Macmillan: I have to admit, I didn't put in enough time. I kind of glanced over these and, I mean, you know, a busy guy. I got, you know, 1500 acres, I gotta check. What I remembered was that it looked like the pesticide that I chose was less expensive, but it also looked like maybe it didn't have as much of an impact on beneficials. And I might have gotten that wrong.

[00:17:27] Jason Thomas: Yeah. So if you look at the research and maybe you got confused, and that's part of, that's part of what we teach as well as. You know, you might not always have the trade name, which is like, you know, the for Roundup, which is, you know, actually glyphosate, right,

[00:17:41] So when you get like a research document, it's not gonna say use Roundup, it's gonna say, use glyphosate. And you have to actually go and read the label and check it, right? It's like a prescription. The, your doctor might not tell you the name of the product, but he's gonna tell you, you need I you know, whatever, whatever the actual active ingredient is,

[00:18:00] Right, So, So maybe you just got confused with that. And that's something we teach people, right? Part of the game is, okay, this is what the research says, and here's,, it says this is this pesticide, this information. And then if you look at the label and compare it to the research, then you'll be able to understand. And so a lot of the times our players do better when we play as teams.

[00:18:20] I actually like to play it with teams the most rather than just individuals because they'll have a discussion and a conversation. So if you were playing with someone else, someone could have said I don't know if we should use this one. This, the research says that if we use this pesticide, it could kill our beneficials.

[00:18:35] Right? So having a team and then hearing those discussions is a lot of fun to hear people discussing things and then watching how the team makes a decision. I. Because sometimes the teams will make a decision based on the popularity of one person on the team. Like with college students, they'll pick whichever kid's the most popular or says it in the coolest way. Versus, you know, some kid that's in the back that's reading the research and may not be the most popular kid, but they're like the research says this, but then they're like this one costs less, so we'll use that one. Right.

[00:19:06] So it's fun to watch people. Make decisions and see why they make them. But don't feel too bad if you didn't get the highest score. The purpose of the game is to have fun, right? That's why there's built in punishments just to, you know, let you experience, okay, so maybe I didn't make the best decision at this point, but that's the purpose.

[00:19:25] Craig Macmillan: Grant is there, like a perfect way to play through this game? Is there a solution to this game problem here?

[00:19:36] Grant Loomis: Yeah, so for the scenario we've created, it's kind of fun. We've been asked, well, how do you guys score when you play this?

[00:19:44] Craig Macmillan: Right,

[00:19:45] Grant Loomis: and we made it so we know how to play it so you can get. The quote, unquote 100% that no one has organically gotten on their own.

[00:19:55] , There's a couple of methods that can be utilized to rook the game, if you will, or, school, the game one of 'em is you don't use any pesticides and you, use irrigation early on. And you knock back your pest population so that that bog beetle population is keeping it completely in check. And so

[00:20:21] Jason Thomas: what are the bog Beatles?

[00:20:23] Grant Loomis: The bog beetles are the fictitious predator that we have created in this scenario. . , When you have a healthy population of these predators, they're controlling this aphid like fan bug that could be devastating to the crop. Then later down the road, you go and you use the action custom farming in which you make some money back.

[00:20:45] And that money you spent on that extra irrigation you earned back with the custom farming and your bog beetle or your predator population is so large that. They just take care of whatever, whatever hitchhiker, come back on your equipment after doing some custom farming at your neighbor's place.

[00:21:02] Craig Macmillan: Then I wanted to touch on that. So the actions that I can take, I can take two actions per round for free. I have some money and I can spend money to take an additional action for a total of three. And my actions include things like scouting, thorough scouting, irrigating, a pesticide application. Am I leaving anything out?

[00:21:22] Jason Thomas: Research and then custom farming.

[00:21:25] Craig Macmillan: One of the things that I thought was interesting is that I didn't realize this going into the game and I did not custom farm, but you have it set up so that I can say, Hey, I can make a little money on the side, which will help offset crop losses, right? By custom farming for somebody else. And I was like, oh, that's kind of neat. But what I didn't realize, maybe it was in there but I didn't catch it. Again, it's the human part. You're gonna bring pests from the neighbor back into your crop. So you're taking a chance there.

[00:21:52] Jason Thomas: Yep. And the research, it says that, and in answer to what Grant was saying about what's the perfect way to win the game, when we designed the game, we specifically didn't want it to be, there's one perfect answer.

[00:22:04] There's a couple ways. With this scenario, you can do really well, and that's with heavy habitat modification and predator support, or by using a pesticide that doesn't kill predators. And then trying to make money here and there. When we designed it, we didn't want it to just be, oh, you just used pesticides and you win the game. There's multiple ways to win because, and again, it's not about the score. The score is just a representation of how you did. But you know, if people are learning and they're thinking about pest management, then that's a win for us.

[00:22:36] What you played is scenario one. We also have an expansion for the game, which introduces events where something changes. We increase the the pest population or we change the number of predators that are present this year. Or we introduce economic factors like your very tight, there's inflation, so your budget is cut in half.

[00:22:56] So we introduce all these different factors there's no perfect right answer of how to do well at the game because once we change one of those factors. You're only gonna do well if you are following the principles of integrated pest management, which are, I'm out actively scouting and figuring out what's going on in my field.

[00:23:14] I'm making good estimates, I'm making decisions based on research, and I'm using all my tools that are available to me. And I have some flexibility to use those because one year that pesticide might be the right answer, but then another year it might not. Right.

[00:23:27] So that's the way we've designed the game so that there's not a perfect. Solution. We want them to , use critical thinking skills to make decisions each time they play the game because the game will change if they play it multiple times, which is what we want them to experience.

[00:23:43] Craig Macmillan: And that's what I was just gonna ask is, so when you've, done this live with the board game, have you gone through you got eight rounds per game? Have you gone through repeated iterations of the game with the same person?

[00:23:52] Jason Thomas: Yeah, so especially with high schoolers, they'll try to do it pretty fast. So I've had some high schoolers get through it pretty quickly, and then I'll have them do it again. But the key thing with those groups or with people playing the game is. Trying to learn why they're making the decisions that they're making and have them reflect on the decisions they make. , That's a critical part of it. But yes we have had them play through it multiple times. We'll play this scenario and then we meet with them again either another day or even the same day. Right. We can play another one depending on time.

[00:24:20] Craig Macmillan: Yeah. And so Grant, actually I wanted , to touch on that. You know, when you buy a board game, it's like for ages five and up, you know, small pieces. It could be a choke hazard, you know, beware, beware the ilian, the Ilian crawler, you know, which, which I thought was so clever, it's a fictitious crop of fictitious insects.

[00:24:38] And I just, I thought that was great. How did you think about this thing? What was the age group span you were kind of shooting for? Because it seems like very targeted towards like a professional level pest manager, but obviously you're using it for education to folks that are not in agriculture or maybe not even adults.

[00:24:53] What, what kind of age range are you thinking about and how did you find a way of making all that? Work together.

[00:25:00] Grant Loomis: Lots of play testing. We originally just reached out with our close friends and unwilling family members that were our first, test subjects that would spend some time with us, give some feedback of this was too challenging. We originally started out with a really text-heavy, big document.

[00:25:21] And over time we've continued to receive, receive feedback at our, at these workshops with pesticide applicators that have license in Idaho, that we kind of have this captive audience that they come and they have to get these continuing education credits.

[00:25:38] And so that originally was our target audience. How can we approach these workshops that. People are dragging their feet that they have to come and check off the box, be a warm body in this seat, and have a little bit of fun. And that that was our original target. As we went through the the play testing, Jason would come up with all of these ideas.

[00:26:00] A thousand variables. How about this? How about that? How about this? How about that? And I was the soundboard of. That's a great dream, but I'm gonna crush it. And so we kind of had this battle back and forth of that's a great idea. Maybe this is something we table for another time, pun intended.

[00:26:19] But we got to a point where I thought, I've got this connection with a local middle school. I'm gonna take it to this, the seventh and eighth grade classes, see how it goes. And I. The feedback was this needs to be a, an info chart. It's really simple and easy to digest. We need to make it so even kids, I mean, jokingly, we're all just like big kids, right? Like how much attention do we want to give some things and

[00:26:46] Jason Thomas: Like Grant said, originally we had two full sheets, so you'd have a full piece of paper front and back, which I like that in some ways because that simulates the reality of. so let's say I have problems with my apple tree at my house. What am I actually going to get?

[00:26:59] I dunno how the University of California system is, but it's probably similar to ours where most things are very text heavy. You have to figure out how to read that. So one of our college teachers, she has the infographics, which we gave you, which is just very simplified.

[00:27:13] Mostly a few little images and just, you know, maybe like 10, 12 sentences. But she likes to let them read the actual longer one because she wants them to learn how to actually find information and be more. Thoughtful about their reading, right? So if you have time, that works great. But that was the biggest change, like Grant said, is just making those easier to read.

[00:27:32] And as we look at doing something in elementary schools we're looking at, instead of having actually reading to learn about the predators, they'll do like a comic book. So it shows this predator that's purple eats this bug and you like see them eating. So it's like even more limited text. For the kids to have to read, but they're still learning the principles of integrated pest management. Right?

[00:27:54] Craig Macmillan: Yeah. And I, and that was something that I thought was really interesting. When I was doing research on the past, one of the past it actually had what looked like an action threshold.

[00:28:03] Jason Thomas: Yeah.

[00:28:04] Craig Macmillan: Where you, aren't gonna suffer significant damage until you have this many bugs per plant or this many, what the ratio is which I thought was really interesting.

[00:28:13] And then in terms of the concept of an economic injury level, I was on my own to figure that out, right? I knew what an action threshold was, so maybe I better pull the trigger here. But I only had damaged information from the sample that I was taking. I thought that was really, really interesting because just to give away the ending of my little journey through the world of pest management my samples were coming back looking great. I was doing great. I had the pests out there, but I also had beneficials and all the crop samples were coming back as being healthy and then had a little bit of damage towards the end. And I was like, yeah, alright. We pulled this up and then when you pulled back the curtain. I actually lost like almost half the crop, you know?

[00:28:57] ' you can't count every plant. You can't see every piece. And that's a huge piece of the, of the IPM picture is, you're only as good as your scouting. I. You know, and how much scouting can you do, you know, and how representative of it is it? And I thought that was a really fun part of the process.

[00:29:13] 'cause it, especially action thresholds, I think is a concept that doesn't get utilized successfully in a lot of cases. I know that economic injury level is difficult. You know, my area is wine grapes. This is, the podcast is intended for wine grape growers. It obviously applies well beyond that. How much tolerance do I have? And that was up to me and I thought that was a really fascinating part of the whole thing.

[00:29:34] So I'd like to hear a little bit more about how the formats develop, because you started with the board game idea and then you've developed a, a version online and also a version for the phone. What was the progression there?

[00:29:46] What was the evolution of it?

[00:29:48] Grant Loomis: Yeah, it's a, it's a tale of money, unfortunately. So ideas are great, but once you have ideas and funds that can bring those ideas to fruition, , that's when the fire starts. And so we had worked back and forth, you know, this is, this is kind of like on the back of a napkin ideas, right? I mean, we're starting with this, this is just an idea.

[00:30:10] We go out of the idea phase two, we received a little chunk of money from our director of extension to do a prototype. And so we're, we're messing with this prototype. It's not as refined as our final product, and it's working. This is the prototype we're taking with close friends, colleagues to, to have time with them, give them, getting our thoughts clear on what we're trying to present. They play it, they give us feedback.

[00:30:40] So after we received the funds for this prototype, we went to the next stage, which was applying to a western PDP through SARE western SARE. And we were successful with receiving those funds in the amount of a hundred thousand dollars, which really exponentially grew our ability to produce, refine, hire a professional board game artist.

[00:31:04] There is an actual profession that is highly sought after. We feel like we, we got one of the best in the world in Vincent Re who did our artwork assets here.

[00:31:15] Just a great project, it started as this idea. Step one is getting a little pocket of money, prototype, testing, testing, testing, then taking it to the next level.

[00:31:26] And then as that has progressed, we've had some corporate entities that have been interested in sponsoring some activity with the board game education internally for their organizations. Syngenta's one of those just a big player in the ag world and. I just think that's a very true testament of the value that educating about pest management in a fun and engaging way, like the board game has been.

[00:31:51] Pest friends really helps people digest the concepts. We can talk about it, we can give death by PowerPoint all day long, but feeling something and and making your own decisions. You're much more likely to share that with somebody, and then b, also employ that into your operation if you're an operator.

[00:32:13] that's kind of the progression of step one to step whatever we're at now, over the last three years of this project it's just grown and grown and it's allowed us to connect with individuals like yourself. Like I never thought I'd be connecting with. You know, California Vineyard producers over this board game, but here we are.

[00:32:32] So that's just the amazing the amazing growth this this project has had and the really critical importance it has in education about pest management and integrated pest management.

[00:32:43] Jason Thomas: part of the reason why we wanted to make it digital is we wanted it to be more accessible. So if there are folks in California or anywhere in the world that want to use this board game with the digital format. They can get access to it. Obviously it's better if they get some training from us so they can kind of understand how to do it, but we want it to be accessible to anybody so they can try it out. Because setting up the physical board game takes more work. It's more fun, it's more rewarding, but in some settings it's just easier to just pull it up on your laptop and play it with them, rather than having to, you know, set up a physical board game and keep track of a bunch of pieces.

[00:33:20] Craig Macmillan: , What is the URL for the online?

[00:33:23] Jason Thomas: So if they go to pest friends.org, that's how they can find out more about the board game. But the best thing to do is to email us at Pest friends@uidaho.edu. So that's u as in the university u idaho.edu. And then we can train people how to use this. 'cause that's part of our goal, right? We want people to use this and take advantage of it and be able to get the most out of it.

[00:33:47] Craig Macmillan: .

[00:33:47] And what about the phone version?

[00:33:49] Jason Thomas: That would be the same. So in order to play it on your phone or to play it on a computer there has to be a moderator or somebody who is tracking everything.

[00:33:57] So let's say that I am a high school teacher and I wanna play it with my high schoolers. I will go to pest friends.org. I'll create an account which is all free. You just create an account with your email and then I will create an invite game. And then I'll get a code on that invite game, and I can give that to my students. I can create individual codes for each student. So if I have 12 kids and I want to track each kid and how they play the game, I can do that, or I can create just a general code for everybody to do when they play the game.

[00:34:28] So, but if they're gonna play it on their phone. There has to be a teacher or somebody, whoever wants to run the program, has to set up an account on pest friends.org, and then they give the codes to everybody else and they just play off of their web browser. So as long as they have internet, anyone can play on their phone.

[00:34:44] Craig Macmillan: This is a, for either of you have there been two parts? One, are there things that you were really happy about once you've executed this and things like, yeah, we wanted this particular outcome, be it educational or whatever, and yeah, that seems to be working. Yay. And then were there surprises or obstacles that came along once you started working with the actual humans? Playing the game.

[00:35:08] Grant Loomis: I'll let Jason answer the positive, and I have a pretty fun negative. But I'll share,

[00:35:13] Craig Macmillan: Go ahead, grant.

[00:35:14] because I gotta hear this. I, I, I have to admit, that's the more interesting question to me. And then we'll go back to the positives. We'll end in a

[00:35:20] Grant Loomis: Sure. That's, that's great. Yeah. So the negative is due to the arena of academia. There are, and I alluded to this earlier when I referred to, we, created everything. So we had control in being, in, being correct. When we talk about these fictitious insects, this fictitious crop the funnest thing I get when we go to these conferences or workshops where we have colleagues across academia and other universities or other educational organizations, is that.

[00:35:55] I love it when an entomologist comes up to me and says, you made this bug wrong. This is wrong. I can't believe you put the antenna or the thorax in this location and it has too many legs. Or I just, I just get a really odd sense of satisfaction of like, it's, it's made up. It, it doesn't matter. It, it's supposed to act like a bug, but it's made up.

[00:36:20] And so we have had a lot of individuals be critical of. How we have maybe created this, fictitious thing that, well, that's not even real. But our objective was obviously , to teach these principles and not be exact, like I used the idea of the potato. Like we're not, we're not using an I ideal real scenario that someone can say, based on the board game, I know to use this pesticide at this date, at this time for this exact bug. I learned how to identify.

[00:36:49] That wasn't the goal. If you wanna go learn about those identification techniques, this isn't the training for you, but. just love the, the critical nature of, of my colleagues, and it actually has led us to looking at some things more critically. As we develop our expansions. We get a flush of great ideas every time we have one of these presentations, every single time that, Hey, you guys should totally think about doing a lettuce crop.

[00:37:18] I do lettuce. I, I'm totally involved in lettuce and you this, my growers would love this. They need lettuce education and we're interested in, in the topic, but how utilitarian is that? Can it hit every piece as well as what we've designed and there is some value. We've had almond growers reach out to us, Hey, we would love some. Integrated pest management education in this, in this concept, you've developed this board game a lot of times, like a lot, a lot of problems. Do we have the time and money? And that's what it comes down to. I mean, we've organically just between Jason and myself grown this. And it's obviously, it's taken off, but it's not like we have a corporate team. of tinkers in our, in our, in our back room, working away on these next expansions and board games, and.

[00:38:12] They're all great ideas, but the negatives I, I guess I'm walking away from is that we just don't have the, the time and money , to do more, and then that we just get criticized of why isn't this exactly, why is this not exact? Well, we have a reason and that, that just, I always brings a smile to my face and I'm an entomologist and why'd you do this?

[00:38:32] And. We can, we have an answer, and Jason's background is entomology. Mine's not. And so maybe that's why I think it's more fun to, to get harassed in the entomology arena, .

[00:38:42] Craig Macmillan: Well, and I, I think you both, you know, touched on this, that, in reality is too complicated to simulate as a board game. . So when you talk about a crop like lettuce, , you, you do see crop damage. You can measure that, you can watch it. But the dynamics of what's happening in that field, we have, you know, research on pests, but we don't have an equation necessarily that's gonna apply one to the next.

[00:39:06] And the same thing is true for permanent crops like wine grapes, obviously. The value of the crop. And the, the way that you're farming it for the marketplace has a huge impact on what kind of pest management decisions you're gonna make. Right? And so that would be a variable that you, that wine people would want you to bring in and be like, well, how much am I getting per ton?

[00:39:25] You know, is this, is this $6,000, you know, super select district stuff? Or am I playing the bulk market? Or do I have a contract with , a big winery? Is this Syrah, is this chardonnay? Is it on the coast?, It's next to impossible 'cause it's too complex. And that's what, not what the game is about.

[00:39:40] The game is not about training you for a specific real world pest decision. It's about training you in terms of how to think in philosophy and what information you use or don't use. . Which I think is great 'cause it can be generalized. I can understand the entomologist being particular and I can understand cropping people going, oh man, if this was just for lettuce, it'd be so great. But you've done a great job of trying to find a way of simplifying reality and focus on the parts that are important.

[00:40:05] Jason, what were some of the things maybe that were surprises that were really benefits or, or really great findings? I.

[00:40:11] Jason Thomas: I think one of the surprises is just, and I can't think of a specific example right now, but just as people were playing the game, I saw principles that I hadn't even thought that I baked in into it, right? I was like, oh, wow. They're making this decision and the consequences happening to them as I would see it in reality, and so.

[00:40:30] As I was building these simulations, right? I'm just picking numbers and trying, 'cause everything is built on numbers, right? So. Bug a reproduces at this rate. At the end of each round, add this many more equal to their population reproduction rates or this predator eats this much, right? So I was just picking random numbers, almost like throwing in a dartboard, picking numbers, trying to get them to work the way that I wanted. And then we got it working and then we started playing it with people. And I was surprised at some of the choices they made and how the game actually. Either punished or rewarded them for making choices that are based on integrated pest management.

[00:41:08] So that was a surprise and that was fun. And it's always fun to see people play the game and learning something, and then I'm seeing something happening in the game that I didn't ever expect to happen. Sometimes that doesn't work great and you have to fix it, but other times you're like, wow, that went, I didn't even plan for that to go that way, but the game facilitated them to think about this thing.

[00:41:30] Craig Macmillan: And so going back to cropping systems, as you've played this with pest control advisors or or licensed pest managers what range of crops have the players represented?

[00:41:41] Jason Thomas: We've done it with potato growers, folks working in cereals, alfalfa. Some different vegetable crops. And , we've taken this all across the nation, right? So we have, we've, we've done trainings in Montana, we've done trainings in Alaska we've done some in Arizona, even gone out to Hawaii.

[00:41:59] it applies to them differently. And so that's where we have to have a discussion with them of, okay, what kind of crops might this be like for you? And how does IPM work for you? How does this apply to you? That's why, you know, having someone facilitate it, they can really, after they play the game, they can really connect it back to how does this all connect?

[00:42:15] And we have plans to go to England. So we're going there and we're gonna be doing some training there later this year. So we're excited to work with different folks.

[00:42:24] Craig Macmillan: So regardless of what platform you're playing on, you, you have to have a moderator. You have to have someone behind the screen.

[00:42:31] Jason Thomas: Yes, yes. Or at least someone who sets it up. Because you could, as a moderator, you could play the game digitally if you wanted to.

[00:42:38] Craig Macmillan: So I could play it by myself.

[00:42:41] So I could Okay, okay. Because that's what's kinda what I was wondering. Yeah.

[00:42:43] Jason Thomas: You would just have to have it set up first or someone would've to give you a code. So if you said, Hey, I wanna play it. By myself, you could reach out to me as a moderator and I could say, Hey, here's a code so you can play the game.

[00:42:54] But if you ever wanna access your game and see how you did, then you'd have to talk to a moderator or someone who has an account. 'cause we can't track your data unless I'm the one who created it for you.

[00:43:04] So usually there's somebody running the game or facilitating it. But as you saw, so the way we did this training with with you Craig, was , we watched a video at the beginning and a video at the end.

[00:43:14] So we created those to help people have a consistent experience of here's how you play the game, play the game, and then here's what happened. And then also time for a moderator to have a discussion.

[00:43:24] Craig Macmillan: Yeah, and we will have links in the show notes to to some of those videos and to the portals and whatnot, and the emails for getting codes and things like that.

[00:43:33] I really encourage people at the very least, that go check out the videos because they do a great job of explaining. What this is, and you can see it and get a sense of kind of how this all works. I gotta tell you, it really, it really caused me to think, even before I played the game, just getting the background information on it, I was like, this is fascinating. Huh?

[00:43:54] And then I got nervous 'cause I was like, oh, how am I gonna do? Oh no. I mean, you know, and, and I, I just think that that drive, and I'm sure that you've experienced this, that there must be a lot of pressure that, that people put on themselves to perform well. Right. Even though it's a game you want to perform well

[00:44:10] another thing about the structure of this game that I thought's really fascinating is it's not a win-lose game. You don't, you don't lose pest friends now, you might lose your crop.

[00:44:23] Jason Thomas: you might lose all your money, but if you

[00:44:25] Craig Macmillan: you might lose all your money, but you, you, well let's, okay, let's try it again. You know, like that kind of thing. I want to do better, and I was not expecting that, quite frankly. I was, I was like, oh, this will be kinda a fun little thing. We'll kinda see what happens. And then once I was watching the videos and I was getting ready to play it, I was getting a little nervous, you know, I was like, God, I really want this to go well, you know?

[00:44:46] Jason Thomas: Well, And that's how the game is designed. There's tension, right? , Because that's how, that's what reality is. If it was so obvious to make the right choice in pest management, we wouldn't be talking about this right now, right, Because there's no, there's not always just an obvious decision.

[00:44:59] You have to sometimes use your gut and make a decision based on that, but you wanna have research and information to help you make those decisions, right? Because those are gonna help you as much as possible.

[00:45:13] Craig Macmillan: So Grant, what's next for pest friends

[00:45:16] Grant Loomis: yeah, so I guess touching a little bit before I jump into the horizon, the way we. Hope to use the data that we track through this website. So individuals get on the website, they create their account. Then we can see, hey, you're an active moderator. You're utilizing this tool a lot as we have new expansions that come out.

[00:45:38] Those are the individuals we reach out to do our play testing. And so if you find yourself that you're really interested in this and you get a moderator account. We will engage with you and that that's an exciting thing. And the hope is that with this user information, we can have a little bit of a lens into what are the mindsets of people?

[00:46:00] Is the mindset that we're gonna not use a pesticide? Will we use a pesticide? How can we track and understand how people are utilizing the simulation to reflect the reality of our decision process? Of users of pest friends.org. And so on the horizon, we are looking at translation into Spanish , of the board game.

[00:46:26] So making it continued accessibility to increase just users that aren't comfortable in English. You know, , that's a feedback we've received is making it more available.

[00:46:36] Continued expansions, jason is, I'm not involved with this one, but Jason is working with a team on creating a livestock oriented integrated pest management.

[00:46:47] So, so a little bit different arena than crop production. The arena with this one is that another expansion is events that can throw wrenches into your production year. An example would be you got some kids, they're out there in a pickup and trespassing and tear up your field and it causes you some damage and you lose a turn because you had to go out there and take care of it, or you had hail damage or some other unforeseen event that comes and, and has a consequence on your production system.

[00:47:24] the vein is that we've built this system so that other production systems can come into this board game. The physical board game, it's all just cards on this board. And so these cards could be interchangeable with expansions as they're released. We did that on purpose so that if we are able to get to the finish line with this one, but a, a greenhouse scenario.

[00:47:45] So the greenhouse scenario would be that you have different actions. We throw in your action would be, you can release predators into a controlled environment like a greenhouse. And so you have more discretion in that arena of do I provide habitat for these predators and take care of my problem in the greenhouse?

[00:48:08] Or a high value crop has been , on our list to do as well, where you get a contract that pays really well, and so there that's going to influence your behavior In the growing season, you're not gonna do certain things. You are gonna do certain things because your contract is persuading you to, to make actions so that you can meet that contract and get higher value for that crop.

[00:48:30] That's the horizon is we're looking at continued expansions that we've heard the loudest cries for production of these board games in this, this area. And so, and, and where we have support and, and that's where it comes back to those that sign up to be a moderator. We reach out to them, they help us with developing this idea and bringing it to the finish line and getting it out there.

[00:48:53] Jason Thomas: I wanna add something. I was just thinking if I was a wine grower and if I was a farmer or a rancher in California or working in any type of an operation, what does this all mean to me? Well, what I would do is if it was me, I would look into this and reach out to our team. If you have the thought of to yourself of, okay, I want to help my team understand integrated pest management, even if that's high schoolers.

[00:49:16] If you have high schoolers that go and scout your vineyard, I believe them understanding the bigger picture of why they're doing it, they're going to. Have a greater sense of purpose, understanding why am I out there looking at leaves or counting these things, right? Helping them understand the bigger picture and that they actually are playing a bigger role in something very important, which is making those types of decisions.

[00:49:37] So if it was me running an operation. And I wanted to help my staff learn more about integrated pest management or if I just wanted to do like a litmus test to know how well my team understands integrated pest management, I would learn how to be a moderator and then I would play this with them. There are a lot of tools that we have to help people, right? You literally watch a video, you start the game, and you kind of click the buttons of the game and play it with them, and then you watch a video at the end, and we're more than happy to train somebody. So if there's a farmer. In California, you know, who's just like, I, I think this sounds interesting and I wanna play it with my team of 10 people that work on my vineyard.

[00:50:15] If they were to reach out to me via email, we could schedule a time to do a Zoom. I can, I can play the game with them and then I can give them some tips of how they can play it with their team, because that's what we want to happen. We want people to have these discussions and, you know, work with their teams to make sure they understand what integrated pest management is and how it fits into their plan, because. I see that being a great value to an operation of helping their team understand the bigger picture and why they do things, and start having that mindset of, okay, what can I be looking for in the vineyard that could be a problem so that I can report it so we can take actions sooner rather than later. Trying to get that kind of mindset with my team I think would be a very valuable thing to have. I.

[00:50:57] Craig Macmillan: I agree. The big takeaway for me was I had the experience firsthand, but I, I really wanna share this and, and I really wanna see where people are kind of at, and again, it's not like a good or bad thing, it's just interesting question as to how different individuals approach integrated pest management, kind of what their priorities are.

[00:51:15] Let's go ahead and get emails and some links. Now, these will be in the show notes, obviously, but you, you two have actually very easy emails and a very easy URL. Jason, what is your email?

[00:51:25] Jason Thomas: Yeah, so my email is Jason, T as in Thomas, Jason t@uidaho.edu.

[00:51:32] Craig Macmillan: And Grant.

[00:51:34] Grant Loomis: G Loomis, G-L-O-O-M-I s@uidaho.edu.

[00:51:40] Craig Macmillan: And then there was the the, also the pest friends, URL.

[00:51:43] Jason Thomas: Yeah, so you send an email to pest friends@uidaho.edu. So even if grant tries to leave us here or something we'll you that will, that will reach us. So if, if, if we're, if we're both gone somehow, that will get to somebody who can get you access to the game. But we don't have any plans on leaving soon, so.

[00:52:00] Craig Macmillan: All right, fantastic. Our guest today we're Jason Thomas. He's an extension educator with the University of Idaho and another extension educator, grant Loomis, who've worked together to put together this really neat simulation game called pest Friends.

[00:52:12] I, again, had, I got to have the experience. It was really fun. It was really neat. I would do it again and I would love to play with other people, which is also an idea I might have to become a moderator for this just because I'm a geek and I just wanna thank you. Thank you both. I think this is a really neat idea and you've done a lot of hard work on this, and it's a really slick product that you've come up with.

[00:52:32] And by that I don't just mean the vigils. I mean, I. The gameplay was very smooth. The information was very digestible. The decisions were real decisions. So the design of the game was, is really, really smart. And I, I really appreciate that you folks have done this. I think this is a really great idea. So thank you both.

[00:52:48] Grant Loomis: Yeah. Thanks Craig. Really appreciate the time with you.

[00:52:51] Jason Thomas: Yes. Thank you.

[00:52:51] Beth Vukmanic: Thank you for listening.

[00:52:53] Today's podcast was brought to you by Bioworks. At bioworks, their biological and nutritional products allow you to manage harmful diseases in pests that threaten your crops while reducing reliance on sprays. They go above and beyond to protect your crops, strengthen them, and improve yield. They deliver a fully integrated approach to plant health management by combining biological disease and insect control, plant nutrition and superior tactical support for the horticulture and specialty ag markets.

[00:53:25] Make sure you check out the show notes for links to Grant, Jason the Pest Friends game along with recent integrated pest management. Themed Sustainable Winegrowing Podcast Episodes 266 soft pesticide trial, powdery mildew, downy mildew, Botrytis and sour rot 271 Integrating Biological Solutions and 272 thirty gophers a night. Why barn owls belong in your vineyard?

[00:53:57] If yo