Looking like the flag-twirler of a marching band, Kathleen Ryan walked hip-deep between rows of soybeans, twisting and twirling a white cotton net to snag bugs among the leaves and ripening pods.
”I feel like I`m rowing,” she said as she made several swipes through the greenery, dislodging anything that flew or crawled.
Ryan`s pest patrol helps farmers make a profit and clean up the environment. Counting and identifying the insects caught in several sweeps of a field can help a farmer decide whether to apply a pesticide, said Michael Lachance, a pest-management expert with the Virginia Cooperative Extension Service.
If the number of pests is below a certain level, there`s no need to spend money for a chemical treatment because the critters are not eating into the farmer`s profit, he said.
Knowing when, where and how much to treat also means a cleaner environment, said Lachance, who trained Ryan for the bug scouting. Proper application of a pesticide can keep excess chemicals out of the air, ground water and waterways.
”In the past, pesticides were viewed as a cure-all to farm problems,”
he said. ”But within the last decade, there`s been a shift from that type of simplistic thinking to seeing them as corrective treatments.”
”Most insects are controlled by natural means,” Lachance said. ”We use pesticides only as a rescue treatment.”
Since the early 1980s, chemicals have become more expensive and more heavily regulated. Also, scientists have developed chemicals that work more precisely, so a more precise application is needed. Entomologists-insect scientists-have developed information about how many pests are too many pests. That`s where Ryan comes in. For her first venture into bug scouting, she is covered in a skin-care product to ward off biting insects. Her target this day is corn earworms, the most damaging pest that invades Virginia soybeans.
Farmers must pay $7 to $10 an acre to spray against corn earworms, Lachance said. Ryan gets 50 cents an acre to scout the fields to determine if spraying is needed, which is a good investment to help farmers make their decision, he said.
Ryan figures that she`ll make about $10 an hour on the pest sweeps.
Corn earworm moths emerge from corn and fly to more palatable food sources, primarily soybeans, where they lay eggs.
When the eggs hatch into earworms, the earworms munch on the flowers and young pods of the soybean plants.
Ryan didn`t turn up any corn earworms, but she did net a couple of creatures she hadn`t seen before; a blister beetle, which will cause blisters if squashed on skin, and a salt marsh caterpillar.
It`s important to scout for all types of insects, Lachance said. For instance, spiders in soybeans are helpful because they eat young earworms.
”You want to maintain an equilibrium in a field,” said Lachance. ”That equilibrium is destroyed as soon as you spray.
”But you must weigh that with the possibility that profit will be destroyed by inaction.”
