A Bug-Eat-Bug World

Back when Sinthya Penn was a lonely 5-year-old, the child of a German immigrant in North Carolina, she and her brother used to hunt large insects and give them elaborate funerals. “We didn't have the Discovery Channel, so we had to kind of do it ourselves”, she says. Today, at 55, Penn raises bugs in California's idyllic Shasta County, selling and shipping them to farmers and other clients in the US, Canada, and Europe. She owns Beneficial Insectaries, a $5 million-a-year business whose clients include growers for Sun-Maid Raisins, major poultry feedlots, the Los Angeles School District, and even Disney World in Florida. Her firm is one of the largest, if not the largest, of its kind in California, a mecca of the international biocontrol trade. As the organic food industry has taken off in recent decades, so has the smaller niche market of commercial beneficial insects. The art of raising and supplying such allies is a promising way to make conservation practical, and even profitable, helping farmers and park managers reduce their use of costly and harmful pesticides. Yet today, Penn and other professional insect aficionados say that, in the wake of 9/11, their industry is besieged by increasing government regulation of international shipments. Their trade group, the Association of Natural Biocontrol Producers (ANBP), has hired a Washington lobbyist to cope with what it describes as a major crisis for companies buying or selling insects outside the US. Experts, however, say a worse threat is the increasing competition from the pesticide industry, and from genetically modified (GM) crops that contain insecticidal toxins. “If I were in that business today, I'd be very concerned about getting squeezed out”, says Les Ehler, who has taught biological control at the University of California, Davis for the past 30 years. The use of beneficial insects dates back to ancient China, where farmers have traditionally encouraged predatory ants to live in their fruit trees. The first major recorded usage in the US was in 1883, when the Department of Agriculture imported a cabbageworm parasite from Europe. Nine years later, two parasites imported from Australia helped save California's citrus groves from a devastating infestation by the cottony cushion scale. Since then, the total of international purchases of beneficial insects has grown to at least $300 million per year, estimates Penn, a former president of the ANBP. Among the most popular wares are tiny Trichogramma wasps, which kill moth eggs that would otherwise produce larva that feed on corn, squash, and cabbages. Another big seller is green lacewing, whose larvae destroy pests such as mealybugs and mites. At Walt Disney World, managers say they've reduced their use of synthetic pesticides by 90% in the past decade, in part by releasing 12.5 million predatory organisms each year, including spider mites, wasps, and nematodes. At the 200-acre Full Belly Farm, in the Capay Valley near Sacramento, Paul Muller's hope of growing winter squash was revived by a fly, Tricopdoa pennipes. Like many organic devotees, Muller believes farmers have to get away from “quick fixes”. While he occasionally buys bugs, he is also experimenting with growing flowering habitat to attract pollinators and other beneficial insects to his crops. Muller remains in the minority, however. Most farmers still prefer quick chemical fixes, especially compared to the much less predictable wriggly solutions. The beneficial insect business is also subject to the vicissitudes of the produce trade. The Fillmore Insectary, an 81-year-old operation in Ventura County, CA, closed its doors last summer, after a prolonged slump in the Valencia orange market. The insectary, which was producing as many as half a million beneficial insects per day at its peak, began in the days when farmers were still fumigating their orchards with cyanide gas. Looking into the future, Ehler, the biocontrol expert at UC Davis, sees more places like this closing as GM crops such as Bt corn and cotton become more popular and the pesticide industry continues to produce “reduced risk” insecticides, more targeted to specific pests and less harmful to humans and animals. “They're not yet 100% effective, but they're going to be increasingly hard to beat”, he says. Still, for now, Penn remains optimistic. She's even planning to move her “bug farm” to a new facility, a 50 000-square-foot warehouse. “The business side can be stressful”, she admits. “I just want more time to sit and look at my bugs.” Penn says the secret of her success so far is that she doesn't hype her merchandise and keeps up with new developments. Yet, I suspect it's more a matter of her infectious zeal. When I reached her by phone recently, she was all but breathless with excitement at a trade show in Phoenix, where she was learning about a new role for beneficial insects. “We're looking at dung beetles, and how they help break down the manure in pastures”, she said. “I mean, how fascinating is that?” Katherine Ellison

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