Committed to Sustainability
Farmers know something the rest of us may not see: the job of raising food is getting harder.
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Invasive pests keep arriving in new places.
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Familiar pests keep adapting to the tools used against them.
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Some of the pest-control options growers have relied on for years are losing effectiveness or are being phased out for other reasons.
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The world is asking more of every farm — more food, higher quality, longer supply chains, tighter margins, and rising expectations around how that food is produced.
A meaningful share of what farmers work all season to produce is lost in the field before it is ever picked. Global research summarized by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations finds that between 10 and 28 percent of crop production is lost to pests before harvest — every year, in every growing region.
SWD is a Clear Example
Spotted wing drosophila is one of the clearer examples of what those numbers look like on a real farm. If a berry or cherry field is left uncontrolled, university researchers have reported yield losses of 40 percent in blueberries, 50 percent in blackberries and raspberries, and injury rates as high as 70 to 80 percent in cherries.
Because there is a zero-tolerance policy for SWD larvae in fresh-market fruit, a single infested berry can lead to the rejection of an entire shipment. Fruit that is not picked, or that is picked and rejected, does not reach a table. It also does not help the farm meet the costs of production.
Sustainability Contributes to Farm Futures.
Environmental sustainability, on-farm food loss, and farmers' ability to make their own decisions about how they grow are not separate conversations. They are the same conversation, told from different chairs at the table.
Another choice in the grower's hands.
Agragene's work starts from a simple idea: growers deserve more good options, not fewer.
KNOCKOUT™ SWD is one more choice for a grower to consider — a targeted, species-specific way to help manage spotted wing drosophila that works alongside the pest-management programs growers already trust.
It targets one pest, at one stage of its life cycle, and leaves the rest of the field alone. Beneficial insects continue to do the work they were already doing. The crop itself is not modified. The released insects are sterile males; they cannot establish a continuing population.
Because it is targeted and works with a grower's existing program rather than replacing it, KNOCKOUT™ can reduce how often other tools need to be used. That has real implications for the land a farm sits on, for the people who work it, and for the share of the harvest that reaches consumers. Those benefits will build with experience in the field, and we will report on them honestly as they do.
More and improved tools in farmers’ hands. More of the harvest reaching more of the people who need it. That is the contribution we are trying to make.