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Stinkbugs, Fruit Flies and Blight: A Tough Year Ahead for CT Growers

http://cptv.vo.llnwd.net/o2/ypmwebcontent/Tucker/JES%20Stinkbugs.mp3

Last year, Connecticut’s small farms braced themselves against some extraordinary weather, including Tropical Storm Irene and the October snowfall. And now, after a warm, dry winter, they may be facing an even worse threat in the form of damaging agricultural pests. WNPR’s Jan Ellen Spiegel reports.

“They are coming up, there are some raspberries there.”

Sandi Rose is surveying the rolling hilltops of Rose’s Berry Farm in South Glastonbury on a windy April morning. They’re primed with budding berry canes and blueberry bushes tinged in red – all running about three weeks early.

 “They’re just waiting to do their thing. They could use a little rain, thank you.”

But lack of rainfall could be the least of her worries. This growing season is arriving with at least three major problems – a fruit fly, a stinkbug and a fungus. Each has the potential to wipe out large segments of the state’s agricultural business. Enemy number one for Rose is the fruit fly known as the spotted wing drosophila or the vinegar fly. It arrived in Connecticut late last season turning her crops into worthless, wormy messes.

“This pest came in and basically wiped out two weeks of production of raspberries and blueberries and blackberries. It will take almost every product we grow.”

Bishop’s Orchard in Guilford lost its entire fall raspberry crop last year – about $90,000 worth, said co-CEO Jonathan Bishop.

“Now that they’re here, everything from our strawberry crop in June through our blueberry crop and our raspberry crop will be affected.”

But the biggest concern is that nothing’s available that’s guaranteed to kill the flies.

“Really it’s that sense of not knowing right now whether we’re going to be able to be successful in treating it.”

Richard Cowles is frantically trying to change that. He’s a scientist with the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station. Since last August he’s been testing concoctions to help existing insecticides work better.

“Well, I hope Disney wouldn’t mind. But the answer looks to be just a spoonful of sugar. In a gallon of water, a teaspoon of sugar.”

Sandi Rose is willing to try anything.

"Yes we are guinea pigs. What else are we gonna do, roll over and play dead?”

Potentially even more devastating than the fruit fly is the brown marmorated stinkbug.

“ It tends to suck the sap out of different types of fruits and vegetables.”

That’s Jude Boucher, an extension educator with the University of Connecticut.

“And unfortunately it has a very broad appetite.”

Boucher said the stinkbug is in every county in Connecticut, but he thinks it will move slowly enough so there will be time to come up with some sort of treatment. Then there’s the boxwood blight fungus, which came into the state about a year ago. It’s another disease without an effective treatment yet. Bob Heffernan is with the Connecticut Nursery and Landscape Association.

“It’s already done many millions of dollars of damage in that our growers have already had to dispose of some infected stock.”

What also has him worried is the impact on the nursery industry’s exports to other states. They account for about 40 percent of the overall $1.1 billion nursery business. He’s afraid garden centers in other states will cancel their entire Connecticut orders, not just boxwoods.

“It has the potential of being a nightmare for us.”

On the other hand, faced with a potential total crop loss, farmers tend to be a philosophical bunch and Sandi Rose is no exception.

“You know - the neat thing about farming is there’s always another year. You have to be the eternal optimist. You have to know that your grass is gonna get green again and your fruit’s gonna flower again and it just keeps going.

For WNPR, I’m Jan Ellen Spiegel.

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