Reading Time: 2 minutes New York / Reuters – A group of Democratic senators hopes to ban a pesticide the U.S. government has greenlighted for use, according to a bill unveiled on Tuesday in a challenge to Republican President Donald Trump’s push to loosen environmental regulations. The bill, introduced by Senator Tom Udall of New Mexico, would outlaw chlorpyrifos, […] Read more
U.S. senators seek ban on pesticide chlorpyrifos
Are you ready to scout for and control flea beetles?
Flea beetles move fast and do a lot of damage. Be sure to keep ahead of them in your canola crops
Reading Time: 3 minutes Flea beetles are easily the most chronically damaging insect pest in western Canadian canola. Damage results in yield losses estimated at $300 million each year. To limit damage, experts recommend acting early when an average level of defoliation level of 25 per cent or more is reached. Early action necessary According to Greg Sekulic, an […] Read more
Give your insect friends a home
Leaving some non-crop areas with a diverse range of perennial vegetation can save you money on insecticide
Reading Time: 4 minutes What do shelterbelts, pivot corners and field margins have in common? No, they’re not unprofitable or “wasted” areas. As natural habitats for beneficial insects, including pollinators and predators of crop pests, those non-cropped areas may be worth their square footage in gold. Alejandro Costamagna, an assistant professor in the University of Manitoba’s department of entomology, […] Read more
The swede midge threat
Swede midge continues to confound Near North canola growers, and it could migrate farther south
Reading Time: 5 minutes By 2015, Terry Phillips, then chair of the Ontario Canola Growers Association, was advising growers in Ontario’s Near North to stop planting canola on farms that had been hit by the recent arrival of the swede midge. By then, yields were already getting cut by as much as 50 per cent by the pest, with […] Read more
Be kind to your insect friends
Of the thousands of insect species around your fields, only a few damage crops. Here’s a guide to identifying and protecting the good bugs that eat the bad ones
Reading Time: 2 minutes It can be worrying to see insects crawling over your nicely developing crop, but are they doing any damage? And even if they are, before ordering the insecticide, will spraying kill the good bugs that are already at work controlling the bad ones, not to mention other insects that are important for pollination? While killing […] Read more
PHOTOS: A guide to beneficial insects
Reading Time: < 1 minute There are thousands of insect species in the fields across Canada. But how can you tell which are the beneficial insects and which bugs are trouble? Here’s a quick guide to help you identify and protect the good bugs that prey on the bad ones. This guide is also available on the Manitoba Agriculture website at www.gov.mb.ca/agriculture […] Read more
Crop pest scouts may gain from ‘app’lied knowledge
Insect ID is a challenge — but Prairie entomologists say there will soon be an app for that, and a whole lot more
Reading Time: 7 minutes One of the most challenging aspects of crop protection will always be the flying, crawling and chomping critters that show up every season, hoping to take a bite out of your profits. There are a lot of them, they can be hard to tell apart, and wind and weather can determine if insects arrive in […] Read more
Help the insects eat each other
Insecticides don’t just kill the bad bugs — they also kill their enemies
Reading Time: 4 minutes Terry Young has never sprayed for insects. “I’ve had the odd bertha and lygus in my canola and wheat midge in my wheat, but they haven’t been an issue for as long as I’ve been farming, which is 30-plus years now,” he says. Young farms at Lacombe, which is one of the most productive agricultural […] Read more
Grasshoppers, aphids top crop pests in 2015
There were some of the usual suspects, but also some welcome parasitic visitors
Reading Time: 5 minutes At what point is it too late for control? This is a question Prairie producers ask every year, and every year the answer is slightly different, depending on weather and the state of the crop. This year, many producers had to decide how firmly to respond to pest pressures hovering around the economic threshold. Scott […] Read more
The Integrated Pest Management (IPM) challenge for today’s crops
Are you keeping on top of all these new pest-control opportunities?
Reading Time: 8 minutes The term has been around for decades, and it trips off our tongues as easily as “no-till management” and “cover crops.” Yet one of the challenges, even for those in search of a silver bullet in crop management, is the constant evolution of the term “IPM.” Its meaning is rapidly evolving, and so are the […] Read more
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
