Soybean, cotton fields invaded The caterpillar eats its way into the pod and cost farmers millions last year
SAO DESIDERIO, Brazil (Reuters) — Brazilian farmers are battling a voracious caterpillar that likely arrived from Asia.
The pest is challenging the agricultural superpower just as it is on the verge of becoming the world’s top soybean producer.
The caterpillar, helicoverpa armigera, thrives in dry heat and was spotted for the first time in the Americas on cotton farms in the drought-prone Brazilian state of Bahia in early 2012, fuelling panic among farmers who had no idea what it was.
The caterpillar was soon in soybean fields thousands of kilometres away, thanks to the long-distance flying power of its moths, which eat everything from tomatoes to sorghum.
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Crop losses have thus far been limited, but Brazil is now on red alert over the nation’s third major pest outbreak in 30 years.
Officials have stepped up port controls, farmers are rethinking planting patterns and the hardest hit are blaming the government’s cumbersome bureaucracy for not allowing the import of pesticides that have helped control the bug in other nations.
Most importantly, the caterpillar appears to be eating away at Brazil’s proud claim to have conquered the craft of growing reliable crops in a tropical region where pests and disease can spread more quickly than in other major growing regions.
“When you find helicoverpa armigera, you have to act immediately, while they are still small,” said Rudelvi Bombarda, who farms 4,942 acres with his brother in São Desidério, a dusty farming hub in western Bahia.
Bombarda found his first helicoverpa armigera in a bean plant. He knew by the way the fattened, worm-like creature had chewed its way inside the pod, beyond the reach of chemicals, that it was not one of Brazil’s usual leaf-eating pests.
“If you wait and send it to a lab it will be too late,” he said.
Bahia, one of Brazil’s newest farming frontiers, lost three million tonnes of soybeans and cotton last year to the caterpillar and drought, which is nearly half of its usual grain production, said the National Confederation of Agriculture.
However, Brazil still produced an 81.5 million tonne soybean crop.
The caterpillar has not reduced forecasts for an even larger soybean harvest this year, but it has provided a wake-up call about the risks of farming in the insect-ridden tropics, especially as more farmland is put into use.
It also shows how Brazil’s emergence as a major breadbasket has made it the fastest-growing market for biotechnology firms such as Monsanto, which could benefit from the outbreak by selling its new caterpillar-resistant genetically modified soy and cotton varieties.
Embrapa, the government’s agricultural research agency, determined helicoverpa armigera was a new species in Brazil last February, a year after farmers in Bahia had noticed it was different from other pests and seemed immune to pesticides.
“No one was expecting a species like this,” said Alexandre Specht, the researcher who identified the caterpillar at a laboratory outside Brasilia.
A small display case at the Embrapa research centre compares brown helicoverpa armigera moths with the nearly identical helicoverpa zea, already known in South America.
The caterpillar most likely arrived with cargo on a plane or ship from Asia, said Luis Rangel, director of the Brazilian agriculture ministry’s sanitation department.
“The Chinese bring in a lot of plants. It could have come in through this transit.”
China is Brazil’s top trading partner and buys most of its soybeans.
The government has responded to the outbreak by adding organic material detectors in its main ports and airports, which Rangel said Argentina and Chile is already using.
Further measures will be taken in conjunction with the national intelligence agency when the World Cup starts in June, he said.
Embrapa researchers said Brazil was also considering building a pest identification database at its main ports, as does the helicoverpa armigera-free United States.
Brazil had hoped to beat a pest cycle that has plagued Brazil once a decade since it started large-scale commercial agriculture.
First there was the silverleaf whitefly in the 1990s, followed by soy rust fungus 10 years later, and both are still problems.
Brazil was also the world’s top cocoa producer until witches’ broom disease devastated the industry in the 1990s.
The country’s soybean area has expanded by 40 percent in the past five years, meaning the helicoverpa armigera outbreak has had a more significant economic impact, Rangel said.
Farmers’ tendency to plant soybeans repeatedly instead of rotating crops has also made Brazil more vulnerable to pests, he said.
To prevent another outbreak, the government is promoting “integrated agriculture,” which involves monitoring pests, rotating crops and seed varieties and using biological controls and natural enemies, with chemicals as a last resort.
Rangel said it is a completely new approach.
“The helicoverpa changed everything about phytosanitary policy in Brazil,” he said.
Bombarda, who is also an agronomist, said pesticides will be necessary.
“The solution for helicoverpa is to bring in products to control the helicoverpa — immediately.”
The Bahia state government announced that Syngenta’s emamectin benzoate would be available last March, shortly after Embrapa identified the new caterpillar.
Yet a year later, farmers still do not have access to it.
“It turned into an unprecedented bureaucracy,” said Celito Breda, a cotton consultant in Bahia who has travelled across Brazil to discuss helicoverpa armigera and believes emamectin benzoate would provide the most efficient control.
“The government created a bunch of rules and obstacles.”
Syngenta said the company awaited decisions from federal and state governments on regulations and permits needed to import the product.
