Farmers have figured out that the cheapest pesticide is a strip of flowers.
IPFS
Farmers have figured out that the cheapest pesticide is a strip of flowers.
Written by Donna Hancock Subject: AgricultureThey eat the aphids, the caterpillars, and the mites for free, all summer long.
In controlled trials, fields with tailored flower strips had leaf-beetle numbers 40 to 50% lower and crop damage cut by around 60%, enough to drop below the threshold where spraying was even considered worth it.
The flowers attract a standing army to our fields.
We spent decades engineering chemicals to kill the insects eating the crop, when the insects that eat those insects would have worked for the price of seed.




