A Bug's Life
Now that summer and warmer temperatures have arrived you know what else has? BUGS!
Fireflies, spiders, crickets, flies, mosquitos, gnats, wasps, bees, ticks, ants, beetles, and this year Mother Nature has tossed in cicadas to the mix. If you think bugs bug you, farmers have to deal with ten times the frustration as what most people consider an annoyance have the potential to cause us financial damages.
Unless you were raised in a commune during the 60’s and 70’s, my generation’s first instinct is to reach for a toxic, petroleum-based pesticides as soon as they see more than one bug, especially if they are gathering on lovingly cultivated heirloom vegetables or rose bushes. Trucks with DDT foggers drove around neighborhoods ridding pests such as mosquitos, houseflies, and Gypsy moths. At one point, the United States sprayed 80,000 tons a year. It took ten years for regulators to realize the errors of our ways after Rachel Carson’s watershed moment with her 1962 book Silent Spring which scientifically chronicled the effects of chemical pesticides on wildlife.
Farmers are notorious for using chemicals to nightstick nature into submission especially when it comes to the bugs. They want to win at all costs; collateral damages to remainder of the food web be damned. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, over a billion (yes, a billion) pounds of pesticides are used annually in the U.S., the majority by industrial agriculture, mainly corn and soybeans.
When numbers get that huge and consumers are so far removed from their foods it’s difficult to imagine the impact pesticides have on our environment. As I write this the nestlings of House Wrens are fledging on my front porch. For the last few weeks I have watched as the parents have made constant trips to the nest with assorted bugs dangling from their beaks. Today there are five smaller versions perched on the porch rail each swooping down to the ground to catch a meal before returning to the rail where its siblings try to swipe the prize.
Some days it feels as if I live in a wildlife sanctuary, what I would hope all farms would aspire. There are assorted birds, snakes, frogs, turtles, deer, opossums, porcupines, raccoons, minks, muskrats, coyotes and yes, even bears, especially when the wild berries in the hedgerows ringing the hayfields ripen. Guess what all of those critters eat? BUGS!
Every single time consumers choose food from farmers who use organic, chemical-free, and/or I.P.M. (integrative pest management) practices, not only is the amount of chemicals reduced, but the overall damage to the environment is reduced. One would think this to be a no-brainer. Unfortunately, it’s not.
As someone who depends 100% on income from my agrarian endeavors I understand what it’s like to go to war with the bugs. Parasites in livestock are a serious problem. Too often I’ve watched as producers throw chemicals at the problem, but the best analogy I’ve heard was that’s like throwing a water balloon at a giant chalk mural hoping to wash it all off the wall. The only thing it manages to do is make a bigger mess.
How so? Two examples come to mind. First, parasites can develop a resistance to chemical wormers no matter how they are used. Some are given orally, others poured on and some injected. All of them are expensive and many barely work anymore due to overuse yet farmers still use them. Because many of the parasites present in livestock depend on the digestive tract as a means of distribution that means the chemicals end up in the animals’ manure and ultimately in the soil indiscriminately killing beneficial organisms like dung beetles and earthworms.
Crop farmers are equally guilty of chemical creep into the environment. When those poisoned bugs get eaten by someone further up the food chain the results are disastrous, often killing the consumer. The Smithsonian estimates nearly 100 million birds die each year on farmland due to indirectly ingesting poison.
Got a rodent problem and put out poisoned bait? Think about what happens to the owls and hawks who eat the poisoned rodents. Got slugs and snails? Those chemicals also kill amphibians so goodbye frogs and turtles. You can see how the effects snowball into decimating the veritable smorgasbord residents of a healthy ecosystem depend upon.
So what’s a farmer to do? Lots! Most importantly, we use our brains instead of poisons. By learning each pest’s lifecycle we can interrupt it through an assortment of means that don’t introduce deadly toxins into the air, soil, and water. I’ve been on many farms and in greenhouses where crops were specifically planted to attract pests effectively luring them away from the cash crop. My favorite method of dealing with bugs is to encourage natural predation with both wildlife (think Bluebird and owl boxes and Purple Martin condos) or by using domestic stock. I met an apple grower who uses pigs to clean up under his fruit trees in the fall which has eliminated his chemical usage. The added bonus (and income)—bacon and sausages! Pastured poultry following cows help break up the manure patties while turning every fly, worm, larva, and beetle they can catch into meat and eggs. Ducks clean up snails and slugs. Guinea hens, while obnoxiously loud, will reduce tick populations. I’ll take a ticked-off neighbor over Lyme disease any day. Oh yes, and they also eat beetles, aphids, mosquitoes….