Farming With Insects : Anti-Chemical Group Pits ‘Good’ Bugs Against ‘Bad’

With missionary zeal, Paul Buxman loves to tell fellow farmers ways they can eliminate or at least reduce use of commercial chemicals to control pests.

And he’s just as interested in learning new ideas and experiments from other growers about what he calls “natural farming.”

That desire to exchange information led the grower from Dinuba in Tulare County to found California Clean Growers Assn., a group of about 100 farmers who seek compromises between continual sprayings of crops and the organic emphasis on no commercial spraying.

They share information through quarterly newsletters with the attitude that “I’ll tell you everything I find out if you tell me everything you know,” Buxman said in a telephone interview.

Members of California Clean are urged to evaluate every chemical carefully to determine whether its use will increase pollution.

“We want to bring some accountability back to farming and base our farming decisions on what I consider moral principles,” Buxman says.

“We know we can’t continue to pollute, so we have to ask questions about every chemical, natural or unnatural, whether it is harmful to the environment or whether it lingers on the fruit.”

Buxman, 40, used to spray regularly but got rid of most chemicals after his son, now 8-years-old, contracted leukemia as an infant. About the same time, Buxman learned that two neighbors also had cancer.

There never was any proof that farm chemicals caused the leukemia, which now is in remission, but Buxman “had a sneaking suspicion it could be some chemicals on my farm.”

So, he carted off two pickup loads of pesticides and began experimenting with natural ways to kill pests.

One of Buxman’s favorite methods is to grow ground cover among his trees and grapevines to act as a habitat for good bugs that will prey on the bad bugs. Sometimes, pests can be eradicated by plants such as California poppies which produce a toxin that helps eliminate vineyard-damaging nematodes.

Deadly Nematodes

“California poppies cause no pollution in water, harbor no known pests, and they have this real neat side benefit--they grow flowers,” Buxman told students in the Pest Management Club at Fresno State.

Buxman, who farms 40 acres, noted that nematodes had killed a vineyard and trees on his father’s 20 acres next door despite multiple fumigations. The nematode problem was licked with “lots of good organic matter that gives off ammonia,” he added.

Buxman said he found that commercial sprays were killing natural predators that eat the eggs of destructive mites, just increasing his problem with mites.

“The pesticides killed spiders, and most spiders are meat eaters,” Buxman explained. “Bad bugs are plant eaters; good bugs are meat eaters.”

He noted at another seminar for farmers that pests often become resistant to pesticides, “but it is difficult to become resistant to being eaten.”

The first year he didn’t spray, Buxman had a severe outbreak of mites, which defoliated five acres of peaches. But the second year, “predators came by the thousands and ate my mites.”

Buxman added that “mites were controlled very simply by not spraying them and letting grasses grow. When you incorporate green matter, the organic breakdown has a terrible effect on nematodes,”

He also found that omniverous leaf rollers, which most growers try to kill, actually enhanced his grapes by eating leaves and letting more sunshine in so the fruit ripened better.

Despite his emphasis on “natural farming,” Buxman’s operation isn’t entirely organic. He has decided that Monsanto’s Roundup is a more appropriate method of killing bermuda and Johnsongrass than the alternate now available, spraying with diesel fuel. Buxman said he used about 75 gallons of diesel to accomplish what two cups of Roundup would have done.

And just because a farming practice is natural doesn’t make it sensible, in Buxman’s opinion.

“You can grow lettuce organically in a high-selenium area, and you’re going to have bad lettuce,” he points out. “The fact that no synthetics were used isn’t really smart, so we are asking: ‘Is it clean?’ ”