I’ve had this conversation a few times now with a friend, so it is time to share it with you. There seems to be a lot of press as the Japanese Beetle makes its way across the country. This was one of those chemical reduction experiments which caused us to triple the amount of deadly chemicals actually used…but it was the thought which counted.
During the 70s and 80s there was a lot of talk about using insects to kill other insects, thus reducing the amount of toxic chemicals we had to produce and more importantly, spray, on the country. It wasn’t a bad idea, especially if the bugs were already native to the region. The trouble was the native predatory bugs, for whatever reason, weren’t as effective as bugs from other countries. Once it was determined that the pesticides we already had would easily kill the new bugs, the way was cleared for them to be imported and raised in quantity.
I was just getting my drivers license during the early 80s. Granted everybody had livestock back then, but, in this part of IL, you could not drive much over 20 miles at night without having to stop to clean your windshield. The bug splats would quickly overwhelm the ability of both your washer fluid and the wipers.
Even a decade later when I would just come home on the occasional weekend, after everybody around us had gotten rid of their livestock, it was all I could do to make it home after leaving the Interstate in the dark. I used to toss a gallon of wiper fluid in the shopping cart without even thinking about it, much like I do a three box pack of facial tissue today.
Several years ago, around the time of a friend’s outdoor wedding, this part of IL was being stripped by the Japanese beetle. Huge black clouds of them could be seen rising up from one shredded soybean field, migrating across the road to some fruit trees, in particular peach trees. Every method of spraying was used. I often wondered why there were no reports of “crop duster crashes” because when you saw the plane start to spray pesticides on a field, you saw it get engulfed in the black cloud. I wondered just how many times that could happen before the engine intake would get clogged with beetles forcing a stall out.
It has been a few years since the beetles passed through, but I’ve noticed a significant change. We’ve got just as many ditches and ponds, but no where near as many mosquitoes. I can drive for hours at night without even thinking about hitting the wash button. Now I only buy a couple of jugs of washer fluid a year.
I’m sure the Japanese beetle is going to destroy billions of dollars of crops as it continues moving across the country, but, I wonder if they aren’t doing us a long term favor. Many farmers and Ag business types are praising “triple stack” and other genetically modified pest resistant seed varieties but, since it was the cut worm moths the beetle was originally introduced to fight, I’m wondering just how many are still left.
