New York Farm Viability Institute Website Press Releases
PRESS RELEASE: May 22, 2006
Contacts:
Abby Seaman, Cornell University Integrated Pest Management Program,
315-787-2422
R. David Smith, New York Farm Viability Institute, Inc., 315-453-3823;
NYFVI Project Grows “Clean” Sweet Corn – Naturally Reduces Worms, Increases Customer Satisfaction
“Clean” sweet corn is not easy to grow. Organic and no/low spray growers
especially have to contend with infestation levels of European corn borer
and/or corn earworm that can approach 100 percent in some seasons. For
consumers that means husking an ear of corn to find little worms among the
kernels. Five farm families working with Abby Seaman of Cornell University’s
Integrated Pest Management Program and Cornell entomologist Mike Hoffmann on
a project funded by the New York Farm Viability Institute, Inc. have helped
improve the odds for harvesting a good crop of the popular vegetable.
Economically, successful application of the natural pest controls to prevent
a 25 percent loss of a sweet corn crop can mean as much as $750/acre in
sales for an average harvest of 1000 dozen ears per acre and an average
selling price of $3/dozen and $2,250/acre in a year of severe infestation
when 75 percent of a crop could be lost.
Having worm-free corn increases customer satisfaction and purchasing of
other farm market products.
“We saw the most worm-free corn we’ve ever had and our customers were quite
pleased. That positive response impacted the sales of all of our farm market
products,” says Mike Thorpe. Mike and his wife Gayle own and operate
Thorpe’s Organic Family Farm in East Aurora.
“The control we had with the wasps in 2005 was better than with our past use
of insecticides,” says Dave Henderson. He and his wife Cheryl grow unsprayed
corn on their farm in Penn Yan.
Three organic and two no-spray growers provided a total of 36 acres of sweet
corn for field trials. They tested the use of tiny Trichogramma wasps as
natural predators that attack the eggs of the European corn borer and an
all-season pest, the fall armyworm,. Pheromone traps were used to monitor
moth activity as a gauge for timing three releases of the wasps. The growers
evaluated spraying an insecticide approved for organic production and
applications of a Bt microbial insecticide mixed with soybean oil put
directly on the corn silks as control methods for a late season pest, the
corn earworm.
Overall project results were measured by customer survey at each farm.
Ninety-one percent of surveyed customers were satisfied with the quality of
the corn. All the farms market their corn directly to consumers.
“Control with wasps will naturally be more variable than the consistency
achieved with insecticide application, but the results will most of the time
satisfy customers that prefer direct market purchase of organic or
no/low-spray products,” Seaman says.
For more information on integrated pest management, go online to www.nysipm.cornell.edu.
The wasps, Trichogramma ostriniae, used in this project, can be purchased
from IPM Laboratories in Locke, NY.
The farmer-led New York Farm Viability Institute provides funding for
projects that address producer-identified barriers to productivity and
profitability and provides agricultural and horticultural producers with
access to technical assistance, educational resources and a network of
diverse expertise in production agriculture and horticulture, agricultural
economics, value-added processing, marketing, integrated pest management,
business planning, business structuring, waste management and on-farm
business opportunity development.
For more details about the Institute, go online to www.nyfarmviability.org or contact New York Farm Viability Institute, Inc., 159 Dwight Park Circle,
Suite 104, Syracuse, NY 13209, 315-453-3823. # # #