It’s a Bug-Eat-Bug World : Firms Supply Farmers With ‘Good’ Insects to Chew Up the ‘Bad’ Ones
For Jack Blehm and son, it’s a bug-eat-bug world.
Jack and Jake Blehm breed good insects to eat bad insects at Rincon Vitova, one of a group of 15 insect firms nationwide. Every day, Rincon produces more than 80 million voracious critters from ladybugs to wasps.
Farmers concerned about effects of pesticides are turning to organic alternatives, and business at Rincon Vitova has tripled in the last five years. In 1988 alone, the Blehms said, they supplied millions of dollars worth of bugs to customers on three continents.
The close-knit group of insect firms have sales that total $25 million annually, the Blehms estimated.
Most insects are sold to cotton and vegetable growers, as well as to back-yard farmers who want to avoid pesticides.
The low-tech bio-pest control is the latest rage in pest eradication. It was first used by the Chinese thousands of years ago and was in vogue in the late 19th Century.
And the idea is catching on again. Some campuses are adding classes on integrated pest management. The Assn. of Applied Insect Ecologists, a trade group, is producing a video that shows farmers how to work with beneficial insects. The state Department of Agriculture approves of the low-tech method.
“This is the future,” added Ken Hagen, a professor of entomology at UC Berkeley. “There is a great need. The farmers are desperate.”
State agriculture officials estimate that less than 10% of California’s growers use the method. Controlling pests this way takes longer, and because pesticides kill good bugs along with bad, farmers are forced to stop chemical spraying while waiting for the good bugs to do their job.
“The hardest thing for the farmer is to have enough faith,” Jake Blehm said. “He’s not used to seeing pests in the field; he’s used to a quick knockdown.
“With this method, you have to watch for several weeks before you see a difference. And at the beginning, all the farmer sees is that his crop is contaminated with bugs.”
Rincon Vitova began in 1948 and today sells 15 species, including beetles, mites and parasitic wasps that help control flies at chicken and livestock ranches.
Jack Blehm, a licensed pest-control adviser, provided the business and production expertise. His partner, E. J. Dietrick, an entomologist formerly with the biological control division at UC Riverside, provided the field know-how.
They took their name from Rincon Beach, where they first set up shop, and Vitova Insectaries, a Riverside-based firm they bought in 1972.
Business has grown steadily for Rincon Vitova, which today sells about 5% of its bug crop to universities and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The firm employs about 40 workers during the peak season, from April to September, and houses its offices in cottages along railroad tracks. The bugs hang out in a series of former ship-cargo containers.
Rincon Vitova even sells bugs to movie makers. Last summer, a studio filming a horror movie placed a request for four gallons of maggots. “We shipped them Federal Express to their location site in Montana,” Jake Blehm said.
More than 600 species of beneficial insects have been introduced into American agriculture in the last century to curb pest populations, according to the USDA, which must approve the insects for use before the firms breed them.
