Top 7 Crop Pests You Must Know As A Farmer
Here is some hard information you must know as a farmer. The Do's you must follow on your farm and the don'ts you must avoid.
- Slugs
- SQUASH BUGS
- APHIDS
- SQUASH VINE BORERS
- JAPANESE BEETLES
- TOMATO HORNWORMS
- CUTWORMS
SLUGS
These slimy critters give trouble to farmers, year after year. Handpicking was highly rated as a control measure with 87%success rate, followed by iron phosphate baits which are 86 percent% and diatomaceous earth (84%). Opinion was divided on eggshell barriers (crushed eggshells sprinkled around plants), with a 33% failure rate among gardeners who had tried that slug control method. An easy home remedy that received widespread support was beer traps with an 80% success rate
SQUASH BUGS
This had sabotaged summer and winter squash for farmers, and even ducks couldn’t solve a serious squash bug problem. Most gardeners reported using handpicking as their primary defence, along with cleaning up infested plants at season’s end to interrupt the squash bug life cycle. The value of companion planting for squash bug management was a point of disagreement among farmers with it seeming the best control method while some consider it a failure. Spraying neem on egg clusters and juvenile squash bugs is also helpful.
APHIDS
Active interventions for this pest include pruning off the affected plant parts and applying insecticidal soap, which was reported effective. There are other passive methods, such as attracting beneficial insects by planting flowers and herbs, and the ability of sweet alyssum and other flowers to attract hoverflies, which eat aphids. “We attract a lot of beneficial by planting carefree flowers in the vegetable garden, including calendula, borage, zinnias, cosmos and nasturtiums”
SQUASH VINE BORERS
This pest had caused problems for farmers. The best control methods are crop rotation and growing resistant varieties of Cucurbita moschata, which includes butternut squash and a few varieties of pumpkin. The C. moschata varieties are borer-resistant because they have solid stems. Interestingly, if you’re attempting to fend off squash vine borers, lanky, long-vined, open-pollinated varieties of summer squash (zucchini and yellow crookneck, for example) may fare better than hybrids, because OP varieties are more likely to develop supplemental roots where the vines touch the ground, so if squash vine borers attack a plant’s main stem, the plant can keep on growing from its backup root system.
JAPANESE BEETLES
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Handpicking is the most popular control method. Some farmers grow trap crops of raspberries or other fruits to keep Japanese beetles away from plants. Several commonly used interventions — garlic-pepper spray, milky spore disease, pheromone traps and row covers had high failure rates.
TOMATO HORNWORMS
This post is a bit of concern rn for most farmers but handpicking has been recorded as the preferred control method, tomato hornworms are among the easiest garden pests to handpick (probably because they’re large, easy to spot and produce a telltale, pebbly trail). They are often covered with rice-like cocoons of parasitic braconid wasps.
CUTWORMS
This pest only affects a small number of farmers and effectiveness ratings for using rigid collars (made from plastic drinking cups or cardboard tissue rolls) to protect young seedlings from damage were amazingly high (93%effectiveness rating). A common practice to reduce cutworm damage is to cultivate the soil’s surface once or twice before planting and hope robins and other bug-eating birds will swoop in to gather the juicy cutworms. Big, sturdy seedlings are naturally resistant to cutworms, so many farmers set out seedlings a bit late to avoid cutworm damage.
