Richard Ha writes:

At Hamakua Springs Country Farms, we use techniques of Integrated Pest Management to control insects and plant diseases.

Integrated Pest Management is a program of prevention, monitoring, and control. It lets us drastically reduce or even eliminate the use of pesticides, and also means we minimize the toxicity and exposure of any pesticide products we do use.

Say, for instance, we find an insect tunneling through the tomato leaves, and that there are so many of them the leaves are drying up, causing the tomato plant to shrivel up and die.

First we send an insect sample to the Extension Service office for identification.

Having identified the insect, we learn as much as we can about it, such as its life cycle, enemies, likes and dislikes. Then we figure out how to encourage insects that feed on that pest, while also looking for ways to make it difficult for the pest to grow. If we have to spray, we choose the least toxic chemicals as we know that sooner or later insects become immune to chemical sprays. That’s another reason it’s not good to rely on chemicals alone.

The leaf miner, for instance, tunnels through a tomato leaf and causes yields to decrease drastically. But we know that there’s a tiny wasp that will lay its eggs next to or on the leaf miner larvae, and as the wasp eggs develop into adults they feed on the leaf miner larvae. This is all in miniature, as the leaf miner is about 1/16 of an inch long, while the wasp is approximately 1/8 of an inch.

So our job is to encourage the wasp (by not spraying it with chemicals). After a time, the wasp and the leaf miner will find a balance. At that point the leaf miner will no longer be an economic problem.

This is an example of how we deal with one problem insect at the farm. It’s been a success—leaf miners are no longer a problem for us.

Still, it’s a big leap of faith to go from chemical control to Integrated Pest Management. From time to time, I will write about how we use these methods to control other insects.