Be a Champion for Plant Health

By Greg Rosenthal

The United Nations (U.N.) has thrown its weight behind plant protection by declaring 2020 as the International Year of Plant Health (IYPH). If you’re a member of the plant protection community, you’ll want to join in this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. The IYPH is a worldwide campaign to promote the value of our precious plant resources and the need to safeguard them against invasive pests.

Consider the value of what you protect. Healthy plants are the foundation of life on Earth. They make the oxygen we breathe and give us 80 percent of the food we eat. Plants sustain our livestock and poultry. They also provide habitat for wildlife, form the base of nature’s food chains, and help biodiversity to flourish.

In addition, agricultural trade in plants and plant products has become crucial for human survival and economic growth in many rural areas, and it is worth nearly $1.7 trillion annually. Over the past decade, its growth has almost tripled. Thriving plants mean thriving people.

“For all the professionals who devote their lives to protecting plant health, the United Nations just put our mission on the global stage,” said Osama El-Lissy, Deputy Administrator of USDA’s Plant Protection and Quarantine (PPQ) program. “This is an extraordinary year for telling our story to the world.”

Plant Health Is Under Threat

Yes, plants are critical to life on Earth. But today, plants face an ever-growing threat: invasive pests. According to the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization, these pests destroy up to 40 percent of food crops worldwide, and cause $220 billion in trade losses annually. They can also throw ecosystems out of balance and devastate biodiversity. As we know, invasive pests can spread through global agricultural trade, and this pest pressure constantly increases.

To feed the world’s growing population, agricultural production must increase by about 60 percent by 2050, according to the U.N.’s estimates. That means we must do everything we can to protect plant health from destructive invasive pests.

PPQ Is All In

PPQ is the natural U.S. champion for the year. As the United States’ national plant protection organization, PPQ defends our country against invasive plant pests and diseases and works hard to make global agricultural trade safe, fair, and predictable.

Our work promotes a healthy, abundant food supply here in the United States and around the world. These efforts also help to sustain a vibrant, biologically diverse natural environment. And they support our Nation’s economic growth by helping U.S. growers and producers deliver high-quality food and agricultural products to the world.

Our Outreach Plans for 2020

Throughout 2020, PPQ and our cooperators will be champions for this campaign. Together, we will help raise awareness that plant health is crucial for all life on Earth. We will also emphasize the vital role that national and regional plant health organizations play in protecting plants from deadly pests and diseases.

PPQ will be broadcasting the message through Hungry Pests, USDA’s signature and award-winning invasive species outreach program. Social media, particularly Facebook and Twitter, will play a major role. And our spokespeople will conduct radio news interviews across the country during April, which is Invasive Plant Pest and Disease Awareness Month.

Join Us—Be a Champion for Plant Health

It should be seamless to connect IYPH to your organization’s own efforts to protect plants against invasive pests. The U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization has made it easy to join the plant health celebration. Grab an idea from its outreach web page, which includes a worldwide photo contest open to all. You don’t even need to do anything new. Just download and print the IYPH poster or pull-up banner (stand required) and display them at your currently scheduled outreach events, conferences, and presentations. You’re already protecting plant health—all you need to do is brand those efforts under IYPH to garner extra attention and gravitas.

In addition, you can download and print PPQ’s official outreach materials and use them. You can choose from more than 100 items to download and print. Many of them come from the Hungry Pests program, and many others are PPQ’s official pest alerts, brochures, and outreach products. Just browse and click.

Let’s make 2020 the year the entire world grasps the invasive pest threat and commits to protecting plant health. In the process, you can help the U.N. meet many of its sustainable development goals. These include reducing hunger, poverty, and environmental threats.

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