The problem of pests in agriculture isn’t new, but on Colorado’s Western Slope farmers have found a sustainable solution to help ensure the delectable Palisade peaches and Olathe sweet corn grace grocery stores this season.
The answer? More bugs.
The Palisade Insectary has been working since 1945 to develop organic, holistic solutions for farmers to avoid using chemicals through using natural enemies of invasive species impacting the various crops in an integrated pest control strategy called biological control.
“By natural enemies, we mean pathogens, predators, mites and parasitoids that have coevolved with their hosts (the target pests) for a very long time within the pest’s ecosystem,” Kristi Gladem with the Palisade Insectary said. (Parasitoid wasps are a large group of wasps that need to lay their eggs inside other insects to complete their lifecycle).
“Biocontrol is a long-term solution to pest management. It can bring pest levels down to below the threshold of where …