G'Day Folks,
It’s a wet old week here on the farm and despite the rain I can feel the subtle changes in heat and humidity when working in the field. Whilst out in the fields I witnessed the first of the White Cabbage Moth appear after it’s winter hiatus, she fluttered from one plant to the next fastidiously placing a single tiny cream coloured egg on the underside of each leaf. In four days time each of her eggs will hatch out a single little hungry green caterpillar. These voracious eaters know it is their time to shine and unless we keep their numbers under control, they will devastate our crops before summer is bearing down upon us.
We do this with a combination of natural predators such as wasps and a naturally occurring bacteria which paralyses the insects stomach, stopping it feeding and eventually starving it to death. The bacteria was stumbled across over 100yrs ago when a Japanese man found that a bacteria was killing his silk worms. Upon studying this bacteria it was discovered that it would also kill common caterpillars frequently damaging food crops. The bacteria is completely harmless to all other insects and animals and only effects particular species of caterpillars.
I previously tried an experiment a couple of years ago now, when I decided to leave a patch of broccoli for the caterpillars to completely destroy and in the process exponentially increase their numbers. Which occurs quickly, the cabbage moth can lay up to 400 eggs before she dies, her baby caterillars will chow down on our sweet and tender veggies for 2 weeks before pupating for 8 days and emerging from their green crystal like prism as a beautiful white and yellow moth. It takes less than 30 days to complete a full circle of life, so you can see it would not take long for numbers to reach plague proportions.
The plan was simple, increase the numbers to such an extent, nature would see the imbalance and immediately send in the predators to bring the numbers back into balance. Well, it worked perfectly, the Braconid Wasps turned up, attacked the caterpillars, laying their eggs inside the caterpillar body. The wasps eggs them hatched inside the caterpillar immediately feeding on the caterpillars insides before chewing holes in the caterpillars stomach to move outside and pupate. Then the strangest thing happened, the caterpillar which had been the wasps surrogate and was nearly dead after the wasps larvae had been feeding on it, starts to help the larvae by reinforcing their self spun golden yellow silk cocoons. The caterpillar used its own silk to cover the clutch of pupating wasps in a thick silk mesh. And that still not being enough, the caterpillar then laid itself over the wasps to protect them before dying what can only be described as the most hellishly exhausting and confusing death.
Nature is not only deeply mysterious but incomprehensibly intelligent, why does the caterpillar sacrifice itself in service for its predator? Well before I become philosophical, let me tell you how the experiment ended. The caterpillar numbers got so large, they infected almost every crop and by the time the wasps had reigned in their numbers it was too late, the damage was done, the crops all but ruined.
So what’s the lesson here? Well, nature would not allow so many vegetables to be grown in the one area, never would you stumble across 1 acre of Broccoli in the wild. Nature doesn’t work that way, but here we are and we can’t exactly all decide to become hunters and gatherers again can we. So we need to find something in between. Something that respects the laws of nature and also allows humans to feed the 8 billion hungry mouths each day. That’s what Organic Farming is trying to achieve, it’s not perfect, it’s nowhere near there yet, but I believe the core values of organic farming which have been standing the test of time for over 100yrs now, will continue to steer us towards a more harmonious relationship between Mother Nature and her 8 billion hungry little human beings!
Thank YOU for joining us on this epic journey & supporting Your local farmer!
