Insatiable cutworms on the rise in Alberta

Bugs seem to affect canola crops worst

They’re small, they’re easily hidden and they’re cutting down crops across Alberta.

Cutworms will lay their larvae in farmers’ fields. Once they hatch, they will eat anything and everything they can, including whatever crops they come across, usually at the stem, causing them to fall over and die.

“They’re around every year, it just depends on the conditions more than anything. But also life cycle and the predators they have,” said Chris Allam, a farmer in Strathcona County and Thorhold County with Allam Farms Partnership.

Alberta Agriculture and Forestry’s live cutworm reporting map showed 16 reported cases of the pest as of Sunday.

Scott Meers, insect management specialist with Alberta Agriculture, said reports this year are coming in at nearly twice the rate as 2017.

“We’ve had reports of cutworms all the way from the Lethbridge area all the way up to Edmonton. We don’t, of course, hear about every cutworm problem,” said Meers. “It’s definitely a bigger year than normal.”

If the larvae is found early, they may only affect a small patch of land. But if they go unnoticed they could leave a farmer with little to no crop yield on the year.

“It’s certainly not every field and it’s often parts of a field. The biggest problem is that it’s difficult to catch them before they do too much damage. So you have to be watching your fields really closely,” said Meers.

Meers said cutworms are mobile once they’re in their adult stage, meaning they don’t always attach themselves to the same field.

Maya Evenden is a biological sciences professor at the University of Alberta who specializes in insect populations.

She said the rise in reports of cutworms could indicate the bugs’ population is on the rise once again.

“When they’re at high densities they’re quite important because they feed early in the season and that can really damage a crop,” said Evenden.

Allam, who grows a number of crops, said cutworms are known to eat an array of crops but they seem to most affect canola. He said one of the issues with the pests is that they’re active when it’s cool outside, resulting in awkward times of dealing with them.

“As long as you stay on top of them you can spray an insecticide and stop them,” said Allam.

“It involves night spraying, which is a pain in the neck. So I pulled an all-nighter here awhile back when we were spraying for them. It’s frustrating because sometimes it involves another pass in the field.”

Allam said he’s lost patches of crop but never a whole field. He does, however, know of neighbouring farms that have lost large amounts of their yield to the pests.

One way to deal with cutworms is to spray an affected field with an insecticide.

Allam said the decision to spray is difficult for farmers who don’t want to kill off beneficial bugs.