Spring on the Farm - Produce and Pests
Spring is in the Air and the Critters are Everywhere
As we welcome the advent of spring, the promise of agriculture will be challenged by predictable cycles and phases of birth, rebirth and the struggle to live or survive. Back-to-back drought ending rain years and a rare summer hurricane in SoCal, have generated an abundance of plant growth in our open spaces, deserts, hills and mountains.
With this also comes a measurable increase of weeds, rodents, insects and birds, not to mention the resurgence of predators like mountain lions, bears, bobcats and coyotes. These invasive animals, insects, plants, bacteria & funghi are all competing with the Farmer’s effort to produce a dependable and predictable supply of food for the 8 billion humans on the planet.
The Local Impact of Invasive Plants and Critters
At the Harvest Solutions Farm, The Giving Farm and the Farm and Food Lab, the competition has been significant. An explosion of field mice, rats, squirrels and rabbits have continued to gorge around the edges and into our plantings of cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower and broccolini feeding on the youngest, most tender plantings.
And of course, below and above ground we have to protect our crops from the worms, aphids, beetles, weevils and aggressive weeds that fully intend to complete their multiple life cycles in our fields! It’s one thing to lose a few plants to these ‘pests’ but yet another to lose entire rows or high percentages of plantings that never get to harvest.
“The Coyote” vs The Crows
A resident murder of crows at the SCREC has learned how to pull out new cabbage transplants searching for worms. They have also taught themselves how to poke a hole through the rind of our ripe watermelons to eat the sweet flesh. We put artificial recordings of hawks and birds of prey in strategic places to scare the crows and ravens away.
We have fake coyotes stationed around the fields and put up protective fences to deter the rodents. We have benefitted from our volunteers creating fantastic ‘scarecrows’ for our fields, that help to frighten the crows and seed eating birds…for awhile.
To this never ending task of pest control, we are grateful for the thousands of volunteers who help us plant, weed and harvest crops for the food banks while they also learn that we cannot take for granted how challenging it is to raise a crop and get it to the table!
It is true that “Successful Agriculture Sustains Civilization” and when we fail to consider or recognize the difficulty of that task, we re-learn the hard way that our food supply is not a guaranteed amenity to life on earth.