Farmers vs. flies: 'This new one is a whole new ball game'
EUGENE, Ore. - The berry bushes at Thistledown Farm look peaceful in the summer sun even as a war rages between farmers and fruit flies.
At stake: your favorite summer berries.
Oregon State researchers say the winged invader is turning the berries to mush.
"It's called the spotted winged disophila," said Ross Penhallegon, horticulture agent with the Lane County Cooperative Extension. "It actually started up in Oregon in 2008, came from Japan to California and moved into Oregon."
The fly burrows into the soil and comes back year after year, he said.
The fly is a new challenge for farmers like Randy Henderson at Thistledown.
"This new one is a whole new ball game," he said. "It pierces fruit, lays the eggs, then you get wormy fruit."
The spotted winged disophila likes all soft fruit.
"So far we've seen the disophila in strawberries, raspberries, Marion berries, cherries, peaches, and the new blackberry crop coming on and in blueberries," Penhallegon said.
Penhallegon said consumers are going to have to make a choice.
"There are controls, meaning sprays, and in Lane County 'sprays' is a bad word," he said. "So the public is going to have to decide: OK, do you want the fruit to be good and spray, or do you want to just have value-added protein in our berries?"
There are options to protecting yourselves against larva.
"Put it in the freezer," Penhallegon said. "It kills the larva."
And you can protect your own garden
"You can actually make traps, make little traps out of about 42-inch plastic containers with a lid and put an inch and a half of apple cider vinegar and put it in your garden," he said.
For farmers, the pests cost a pretty penny.
"There's a lot of money on the line," Henderson said, "and a lot of time and commitment on our part."
Not just berry farmers. Anyone who has land which they must fight the berry vines to maintain have now lost the only redeeming quality of this noxious thorn brush.
These insects are the reason Vegans get enough protein.
@Fancy Jack Did you ever see that bumper sticker that said, "Vegetarian, old Indian word for poor hunter". LOL
It's actually the Spotted Wing Drosophila (not disophila). Â The larva are actually teeny tiny, and are harmless to ingest. Â Most people won't even notice them, they will probably just notice the soft fruit, thinking that the berries are going bad quicker than normal. Â The "traps" are basically clear cups with a sheet of sticky insect paper and an attractant in them. Â You can use several different attractants, but white wine and apple cider vinegar seem to work the best (price and quality don't seem to make a difference). Â Though you could use these "traps" to try to control the fly, you will most likely be unsuccessful. Â These traps are usually used as indicators of whether or not the fly is present in the berries, thus determining the need for the farmer to spray. Â Most berry processors have a very low, if not zero, tolerance for the fly in their berries, due to the lower quality of the berries that have the larva in them. Most consumers expect their fruit to look and taste perfect and won't buy berries that look or taste substandard. Â Hence, most conventional farmers cannot take the chance of having the fly "trapped" in their field, otherwise they take the chance of having their berries rejected. Â Instead, they prefer to take a more aggressive approach of spraying at regular intervals, based on tests done by the universities and chemical companies to determine the most efficient use of the chemicals.Â
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warming temps and globalization benefit the insect world. Â
So what happens if you eat the larva?
How was the little trap made using apple cider vinegar? I am not understanding how the fly is stopped? Is it to fall in and die? Do they feel strongly compelled to go to the vinegar?
There has to be a balance. I think if you need to spray, spray and warn folks that you did. Buyers then have the choice to buy or not. I am ok with sprays if I know about it so that I can clean the fruit properly or avoid it all together if I believe it is bad. For farmers to work so hard and loose all their crop is unacceptable. I say do what you have to do and if they want to yell let them yell, just warn them. The ones that yell the loudest are probably eating produce out of Mexico and who knows what they use down there.