County farmers are in for a bad year when it comes to grasshoppers if this warm winter keeps up, says a provincial pest specialist.
Alberta Agriculture insect management specialist Scott Meers spoke Tuesday at the Edmonton EXPO Centre about the crop pest outlook for 2016. The talk was part of the FarmTech 2016 conference.
Dry weather made 2015 a bad one for grasshoppers in the central Alberta region, Meers said in an interview. Wet, cold conditions kill their young, but we didn’t get much of those last year, allowing them to survive and reproduce en masse.
“They’re really well poised, if we get another dry spring, to be a big problem.”
The cabbage seedpod weevil (a tiny ash-grey weevil, the larvae of which eat canola seed) has also started to move north toward central Alberta, possibly due to mild winters, Meers said. He’s not sure if this is a permanent move, though.
Pea weevils (which are grey-brown) have also moved north, likely due to a significant spike in fava bean plantings in recent years. Bertha armyworm numbers mostly collapsed last year due to disease and parasites – they’re very cyclical, Meers said – so they shouldn’t be many of them this year. Wheat midges were also down significantly.
Meers said one emerging pest in the Edmonton region is the cereal leaf beetle – an orange and black bug about half the size of a housefly that eats cereal crops as a larva. The bug has established itself near Edmonton, but the T. julis parasitoid appears to be keeping it in check. The wasps lay eggs in the beetles that hatch and eat them alive. Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada is now working to release more of these wasps into Alberta.
Alberta Agriculture’s crop pest forecasts are available in the maps and multimedia section of www.agric.gov.ab.ca.
Canola farms can sweeten their bottom lines by giving wild bees a home, says a Calgary entomologist.
Biology professor Ralph Cartar spoke Tuesday at the FarmTech 2016 conference in Edmonton about wild bees and farms.
Cartar works at the University of Calgary and has spent about 30 years studying wild bees, particularly bumblebees.
There are hundreds of species of wild bees in Alberta, but most are small, solitary and unnoticed by humans, Cartar said. But when it comes to crop pollination, they’re actually much more important than the honeybees farmers pay to pollinate their fields.
“They’re always there and they take advantage of feeding opportunities if they’re nearby,” he explained of wild bees, so they’re always pollinating – unlike honeybees from hired hive, which show up for a few weeks and then leave.
Research suggests that wild bees can boost yields of canola grown for oil by about 20 per cent, presumably because they reduce the amount of self-pollination that otherwise occurs.
But modern farm practices are hostile to wild bees, Cartar explained. About 70 per cent of these bees nest on or underground, and tilling fields destroys their homes. Tillage, parasites, and possibly pesticides are all contributing to massive declines in wild bee populations globally.
Farmers can help wild bees by preserving wild plants growing along the margins of their fields and creating nest boxes for bees, Cartar said. They should also avoid pesticides where possible, particularly neonicotinoid pesticides, as those have been shown to make bees “stupid” and less productive.
“They have a half-life of something close to 20 years, which means they persist for a very long time.”
But it’s very tough to not use these pesticides, as almost all canola seed is pre-treated with them, he added. Researchers have also yet to conclusively link them to bee declines.
FarmTech continues this Wednesday and Thursday.
