How to Be Pesticide-Free? Grow Bugs!

In Guipavas, France, an insect nursery is growing stink bugs and micro wasps as a natural and safe alternative to pesticides, in order to better protect greenhouse cultures such as tomato and strawberry.

“In 2020, we didn’t resort to chemical treatment at all,” says François Pouliquen, from the market gardening farm Saveur d’Iroise whose greenhouse production covers 8 hectares. “Nowadays, consumers want to eat healthily. A pesticide-free production is a third approach, an alternative for healthy mass production […] since people don’t always have the budget to buy organic products.”

Some 10 million green stink bugs macrolophus and 130 million micro wasps encarsia and eretmocerus are cultivated at the Savéol Nature cooperative, the leader of greenhouse-grown tomatoes in France. Each week, they collect the insects and send them to 126  market gardeners who use them to get rid of whiteflies, aphids, caterpillars – eggs, and small ones. This year, the cooperative will expand from 4,500 m² to 5,700 m², among other things to breed new insects better adapted to the cultivation of strawberries.