After a public meeting on Wednesday, farmers in the north Okanagan are organizing to combat a relatively new threat to their crops.
The yellow stripped armyworm munches on everything from alfalfa to corn.
This year’s infestation has been as destructive as it is mysterious.
The pest hasn’t typically been seen in the area and the government is still looking for answers as to why the worm started showing up in the region in large numbers in 2018.
On Wednesday, the pest was a major topic of discussion as provincial officials met with farmers at the Centennial Hall in Armstrong, and a committee was set up to coordinate the local response to the worm.
That group is expected to start meeting next week.
Organic grain and seed farmer Lucie Zillinger’s canola crop has been hard hit so she is pleased to see steps taken towards addressing the pest.
“Whether the province leads it or not, we have to get to immediate action on this to prevent next year being another loss year, and it sounds like that has happened,” Zillinger said.
Zillinger estimates her farm has seen a 60 per cent hit to its income and will lose money this year as a result of the worm.
“They are voracious eaters,” Zillinger said.
There are a lot of unanswered questions about why this is happening in the north Okanagan now. The Ministry of Agriculture, however, is working with a researcher to try and figure that out.
Ministry entomologist Susanna Acheampong said it could be that the population is coming in from elsewhere.
Acheampong suggested that another possibility is that the worms have actually been around for a long time, but never posed a problem, and we are noticing them now because of climate changes.
“We don’t have answers yet, but hopefully by the end of this season we will,” Acheampong said.
It’s also unclear if the worms will come back next year.
But the community will also likely have to face more waves of armyworms this year. The caterpillars go through two or three life cycles in one growing season.
Provincial officials do have suggestions on how to handle the pest: farmers can harvest early, where possible, and take steps to avoid moving the worms to other farms.
The armyworms can also be handpicked off of plants but that can be difficult for larger infestations.
A full Ministry of Agriculture fact sheet on the worms is available here.
Some have raised concerns that bees could be negatively impacted if some of the insecticides listed in the fact sheet are widely deployed to combat the worms.
However, Acheampong said the intention is share a variety of approaches to tackling the worm, not only to direct people to insecticides.
“If people are going to use these products, we recommend that they try to use the less toxic products and use BTE, as well, which gets the caterpillars when they are very young,” Acheampong said.
Acheampong describes BTE as more environmentally friendly option.
She adds that some of the chemical options should not be used near flowering plants or when bees are foraging.