California’s Busy Bug Man : Agriculture: Entomologist Jim Davis breeds wasps and lady bugs to kill crop-destroying whiteflies. : He says pesticides upset the natural balance of an ecosystem and allow other destructive pests to flourish.
Near where a paved two-lane road turns into dirt and neat rows of lemon and avocado trees adorn the undulating landscape, Jim Davis is trying to breed the perfect killer.
Inside several muggy greenhouses, the entomologist-entrepreneur is incubating insects that hunt down the crop-destroying whitefly, a minuscule bug single-handedly able to ruin tomatoes, cauliflower or poinsettias.
Davis sells his assassin bugs mostly as an alternative to pesticides, which he says can be costly and ineffective and upset the natural balance of an ecosystem by allowing unintended pests to flourish.
His company, which still exists hand-to-mouth, has clients in various parts of the country, and Davis expects to begin shipping his parasites and predators to Europe beginning next year.
“There is no doubt this is an emerging technology with a hell of a lot of potential,” he said, citing a tripling in the number of insectaries in the last decade and widespread usage of bugs on citrus crops.
*
Lack of funding has pressed Davis into service as president, marketer, salesman, laborer and researcher at his Escondido-based American Insectaries, 40 miles north of San Diego.
More often than not, the 4-year-old company loses money. For the last two months, Davis hasn’t been able to pay himself a salary.
But the 38-year-old Davis, whose work garb of faded Levis, ancient Nikes and a sweat shirt qualifies him as a poster boy for CEOs-on-a-shoestring, is educating himself as he goes and enjoying every moment of it.
“I am constantly fascinated by insects and what they can do.”
Just the thought of whiteflies is enough to induce nightmares in most growers.
The nettlesome creatures love melons, lettuce, cotton, broccoli, alfalfa, myrtle and other crops.
In the Imperial Valley, a bountiful agricultural swatch east of San Diego, the pest has wrought more than $100 million worth of devastation in each of the last few years.
The tiny pine needle-shaped insect has bankrupted some growers and caused massive layoffs on other farms.
Last year, growers in the Valley decided to quit planting the fall crop of melons until they are able to neutralize the whitefly.
*
“They get so thick that there are clouds of whiteflies that can be seen from airplanes,” Davis said. “There is nothing that can sustain that density of whiteflies.”
While various “beneficial insects,” as the pest killers are called, are available commercially, Davis claims to be the only one around breeding enemies for the Silverleaf Whitefly, a rapidly emerging ilk of pest cursed in vegetable and flower fields around the world.
Rather than plucking his wasps and ladybugs from the wild, Davis and his part-time assistant, Javier, meticulously grow them from scratch, churning out wasp cocoons--100,000 of them--and future ladybugs--4,000 of them--each week.
The process begins in a greenhouse in which Davis grows nothing but collard greens.
He later introduces the plants into a room full of panting whiteflies, who propagate on their leaves.
In two other greenhouses, he incubates wasps and ladybugs. All his insects are pampered--perfect temperature, plenty of food and potential mates--in what Davis refers to as “Club Med for bugs.”
But too much TLC can cause these steely-eyed killers to grow soft.
“If you make it too good for them, they can become wimpy and they can’t live in the real world,” he said.
Once the whiteflies have laid their eggs onto the collard green leaves, he lets the wasps and ladybugs loose on them.
They lay their own eggs inside the immature whiteflies, sucking them dry of nutrients until there is nothing left but skin.
Davis then recaptures the wasp and ladybug eggs, puts them in itty-bitty Dixie cups stacked one atop the next and sends them Federal Express to growers.
His assassin insects do not come cheap. The wasps are $15 by the thousand and the ladybugs $25 per hundred.
He admits that most growers have little interest in promoting cutting edge science; they are fixated on the bottom line.
*
The bespectacled, clean-cut Davis, who looks little like the insect specialists of Gary Larson comics, has been working with bugs for 10 years, a life experience that has shown him pesticides are not the wave of the future.
Over time, he explains, insects develop an immunity to certain chemicals, forcing growers to increase dosages, and in turn creating even more tolerance among insects.
New federal rules requiring growers to wait 12 to 48 hours before allowing workers back into an area that has been doused with chemicals make pesticides even less viable, he argues.
Ultimately, he says, pests must be controlled with biology.
“People say, ‘Why are you doing it (running an insectary); it’s bad business.’ ”
“But I believe in it and I know it will work.”
