CONNELL, Wash. — Organic farmer Brad Bailie is a believer in bugs.
Strips of blooming plants in a maze of colors — from blue bachelor buttons to white yarrow — dot his 600-acre farm north of Connell. They border fields of potatoes, onions, shallots, primitive heritage wheat varieties spelt and einkorn, and camelina. In each strip, insects, from wasps to flies and lady bugs, search for plant-damaging insects or larvae to eat.
Next to one strip is a long patch with green timothy and orchard grass and fescue jutting out from tufts of dead grass — a “beetle bank” that provides year-round protection for ground beetles that dine on other insects and weed seeds.
Bailie is among a handful of row crop and vegetable farmers in Washington and a small number in Oregon who have created habitat for beetle banks, which originated in England and have been widely used in New Zealand.
While the practice is not widespread in this country, researchers say beetle banks show promise as another tool in the growing sustainable farming movement to control crop-damaging bug pests and weeds through integrated pest management.
Integrated pest management can include ecological and biological controls, such as the use of so-called beneficial insects like ground beetles, wasps, lacewings, parasitoid tachinid flies and damsel bugs.
There is expanding interest today among row crop and vegetable farmers, particularly organic growers, in using natural methods and minimizing use of costly pesticides, say plant scientists and entomologists in the Northwest.
Nationwide, the amount of certified organic cropland acreage grew from 850,173 acres in 1997 to 1.72 million by 2005, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Beneficial insects, including beetle banks, are “where we are heading as organic becomes the new conventional, and it’s where we have to go. It is what the public is demanding,” said David Muehleisen, a board member of the Tilth Producers of Washington and an organic farmer.
Beetle banks, essentially berms of soil anchored by the roots of grasses, protect beetles from plows and other farm equipment and provide shelter to survive the winter. They are designed to mimic hedgerows, said Alec McErlich, an agronomist from New Zealand who introduced the concept to Bailie.
From the banks, the beetles can venture out into adjoining fields to feed.
The beetles will eat some weed seeds, said Rick Boydston, an agronomist with the USDA’s Vegetable and Forage Crop Research Unit in Prosser who’s involved with research on weed control through use of beneficial insects.
Bailie, a WSU crop sciences grad, said he can’t quantify yet how effective the beetle bank and other beneficial insects have been on the land that’s been in his family since 1915.
“I do know I have not had any serious pest outbreaks,” he said.
A drawback of beetle banks and creating and preserving habitat for other beneficial insects, however, is that it takes acreage out of crop production. Beetles also can take several years to colonize a bank, Ellen said.
