11. BUG: Friendly Wasps for Pest Control in Farming

What if farmers adopted friendly wasps that took care of eating the larvae that fed off their crops? A friendly army of bugs helping out farmers control pests just like human antibodies work through an infectious disease by attacking the menace and leaving us healthy. What if farmers could mimic nature’s way of controlling large populations of pests, effectively and without damage to soil, water, and biodiversity? BUG Agentes Biológicos, a Brazilian agroindustrial company, developed an effective scalable method by which to provide biological forms of pest control for farming which are a more sustainable alternative to the commonly used pesticides.

We can think of BUG as a mass producer of armies of countless wasps that are released onto cultivated land and eliminate the moths and caterpillars that threaten arable land crops and vegetable farms. BUG takes advantage of the parasitic behavior of insects and commercializes natural parasites that eliminate pests before they cause large-scale damages. In spite of the nasty warfare just depicted, this kind of biological pest control protects soil, water, and biodiversity from chemical pesticides, protects the surrounding ecosystem and human health in the long term, and defends farmers from uncontrollable pesticide-resistant pests that ruin farming revenues.

Bioagents reduce the need for pesticides, whose use can endanger health and natural ecosystems and eliminate natural pest control dynamics. Whereas in grain crops bioagents can substitute around 40 to 50 percent of chemicals, in sugarcane crops they can substitute 100 percent of chemicals. Contrarily to pesticides, bioagents do not create resistance in pests, pollute water and soil, bioaccumulate in the food chain, or intoxicate farmers and consumers. Contrarily to other macroorganism-based crop protection, parasite wasps cannot easily become invasive because they depend on the parasite-host relationship to survive. BUG’s pest control is self-regulating because wasps have a short life span and a limited flying range when there is lack of food (i.e., pests’ eggs).

The method for producing and deploying the biological agents was developed by BUG’s founders, the biologist Heraldo Negri and the agronomist Diogo Carvalho, who initially saw an opportunity to market the wasps to organic farmers with small-scale tomato crops. BUG started up in 2001 in a technology incubator in the State of São Paulo, Brazil (EsalqTec, part of Agriculture School of University of São Paulo) supported by a seed fund for the initial R&D (around €615,000 today) from FAPESP—São Paulo Research foundation, a public foundation funded through government budgets. Later, in 2007, BUG was funded by Criatec, a venture capital investment program of the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES) for nascent firms with innovative profile, which works as an acceleration platform advised by SPVentures, a venture capital management firm. Recently BUG has been recognized as one of the world’s most innovative companies by the World Economic Forum as well as Fast Company magazine.

After the use of chemical pesticides became widespread, biological methods remained in use in many countries for occasions when pests had resisted the chemical treatment and spread uncontrollably. Between 1950 and 2000, the number of arthropod pest species with resistance to one or more types of pesticides grew in an S-shaped curve from close to zero to more than 500 (Hajek, 2004).

Typically, biological control methods are more specific than chemicals in targeting particular pest species, but the various types of methods differ in their degree of efficacy. The most used methods are microbial biopesticides, typically bacteria, viruses, and fungi which eliminate moths, beetles, and flies, and are usually mixed in water and sprayed across the fields. They are relatively host-specific but less so than parasite insects. These organisms “infect” the pests causing their elimination and are easily produced at industrial scale. Another method is the use of pheromones that disrupts pest mating or lures pests to be killed.

Finally, macroorganisms such as predator and parasitic insects are used also to track down and eliminate insect pests. A paramount issue in using biological methods is making sure they do not cause damage by propagating uncontrollably. For instance, using ladybugs to eliminate plant lice led to the elimination of other important species because ladybugs are massive predators. Cane toads from South and Central America were used successfully to control sugarcane beetles in Hawaii. However, when they were introduced in Australia in 1935 they not only failed to eliminate the beetles but also became an invasive species that today is still hard to control.

On the contrary, parasites like BUG’s Trichogramma wasps are host-specific, able to search for their host, and able to kill the hosts and reproduce at their expense. In addition, they have a short life cycle, from a few days to a few weeks. Mass production of these parasites is challenging, and requires highly technical skills developed with cumulative experience and knowledge in the continuous production of colonies. This biological method is a first stage preventive measure that avoids the massive use of chemical pesticides that are known to be environmentally harmful and damaging to human health damages all while increasing the resistance of targeted pests.

BUG’s advantage is to deploy the natural “intelligence” found in the parasitic relationship and to deploy it as a product to protect crops. The wasps have a strong chemical perception and scan the pest’s eggs to check whether they have adequate nutritional conditions for the wasp’s eggs to be inserted. Moreover, adult wasps segregate a protein that guarantees that their larvae will have enough food to survive and grow inside the pest’s eggs, as well as a substance that signals to other female wasps that the egg is already taken, in order to block competition for food inside the egg. A single wasp can lay eggs in more than 50 pests’ eggs.

This way the wasps multiply while restraining the proliferation of the pest. As the pest population dies, the wasps run out of food resources, eventually disappearing as well. The natural life span of BUG’s parasitic wasps is about 2 weeks. Therefore, the natural biological defense disappears when its mission is accomplished and the farmland returns to an equilibrium that ensures regular crop growth.

BUG developed a scalable mass-production method to breed the wasps and an effective method to release them onto the fields supported by extensive testing of the wasps’ flying range under particular climatic conditions. After testing the wasps for life span and flying range under laboratory conditions, BUG mass produces them using an automated procedure protected by trade secrets.

Wasps are released onto the crop area either manually by farmers, in patent-protected small cartridges that contain hundreds of wasps in close-to-adult stage, or directly from a drone or an agricultural aircraft. Previously, BUG relied solely on the manual release method, shipping the cartridges to farmers and training them on how to place the cartridges on the plants. Recently, BUG worked out a way to spray the wasps from an aircraft, just as pesticides are crop-dusted over the fields. Upon release, wasps are still developing, inside a cocoon that hatches in the field. To cover about 25 hectares of land, BUG is able to release around 1 million wasps.

Although manual release remains in use for small-scale crops, currently the company uses aircraft release for larger areas. The airborne method was important for BUG to expand its operations to bigger farming areas, attract clients in the large-scale agriculture business, and create a level playing field to compete with chemical pest control.

The application of parasite wasps in an open field environment is more difficult than in greenhouses because conditions cannot be controlled. Parasitic insects are very small and their flying range is influenced by wind conditions which is a problem for the effectiveness of their application. Doing this effectively requires competences in the species ecology and behavior in open environments.

First, mass production requires technical capabilities because wasps are living organisms and need to maintain their pest elimination efficacy. Furthermore, wasps cannot be stocked because their life cycle is very short and must be released onto the fields at a specific moment of their development, just before the cocoons hatch, so that adult wasps lay as many eggs as possible inside the pest’s eggs. Wasps are sensitive to environmental conditions and need special packaging and transport conditions to the fields in order to prevent them from losing their pest control properties.

Second, the method’s effectiveness draws on a naturally occurring parasite-host relationship that was enhanced by research and development carried out by BUG. The biofactory collaborates with academic research groups to transform more parasite species into bioagent products. Relying on host-specificity is crucial because earlier attempts to deploy biological control with macroorganisms have had negative repercussions. Furthermore, chemical control brings about the problem of increasing resistance of pests to pesticides which results in larger use of pesticides and lower effectiveness in pest management.

Third, bioagents that are target-specific and crop-specific make pest control effective and collateral effects minimized. BUG customizes their pest management solutions by sampling the bioagents from the cultivated land, as they naturally occur at that point in time, and bringing them to the laboratory to develop the most effective bioagent breed. In the laboratory, BUG constantly tests which kinds of breeds are more adapted to several different climates. The farmer receives a bioagent product that is tailored to the climate of its land, to the type of crops, and to the natural parasites present there.

Finally, BUG uses two methods for releasing the bioagents, adapted to small-scale (man-handled cartridges) and large-scale areas (drones and agricultural aircraft). The cartridge method was designed to be simple to use and does not require safety equipment because wasps are not dangerous to human health contrary to pesticides. In the airborne release method, wasps are sprayed over the field “in the right dose, at the right speed, and with the right protection so they can be effective” (Francisco Jardim, Member of the Board and Investor).

BUG draws on a combination of various techniques and competences to increase the effectiveness of bioagents, allowing farmers to act early and contain the pest by eliminating their eggs with precision without endangering health and the ecosystem. This represents an immediate cost reduction for farmers in comparison with the release of pesticides. Furthermore, the company markets its bioagents to farmers as a preventive solution that enables them to save in pesticides and in future extraordinary measures that would be required as pests become resistant to chemicals.

In the past years, several companies in the biological pest control industry were acquired by leading agrochemicals multinationals. U.S.-based technology leader AgraQuest was acquired by Bayer CropScience in 2012, fulfilling Bayer’s intention of building a technology platform for green products that offer farmers solutions for integrated pest management that combine seeds, traits, chemical protection, and biological control. AgraQuest technologies complemented the microbial biopesticide sold by Bayer and leveraged their biotechnology platform. Also in 2012, BASF acquired U.S.-based Becker Underwood which was included in their Functional Crop Care division. With Becker Underwood, BASF strengthened its microbial biopesticides solutions that work in the presence of chemical insecticides and fungicides. Novozymes acquired Natural Industries in 2012 and established a partnership in microbial biopesticides with Monsanto in 2013 (the BioAg Alliance). In 2013, Syngenta launched a microbial biopesticides line based on technology acquired in 2012 from Pasteuria BioScience.

Although agrochemical multinationals have developed and acquired technology for production of biological control agents, such as fungi, bacteria, and viruses, they have dedicated much less effort in developing macro-scale solutions. Agrochemical incumbents have focused also on genetic improvement of seeds, which require significantly less expenditure in R&D. Datamonitor reported that developing a new insecticide costs $40 to $100 million, whereas developing a new plant variety costs under $1 million.

According to technology experts, the potential of predators and parasitoids remains untapped. Recently, a variety of Trichogramma was introduced in China to help control an insect that became known in North America as one of the most destructive. Trichogramma wasps were used as biological agents in over 30 countries and more than 32 million hectares in 2006, but mostly in South and Central America and in China. However, it remains a niche market solution. Dutch company Koppert is a market leader in commercializing parasite bioagents along with microbial biopesticides, pollinators, and predator insects. In 2012 it acquired the Brazilian Itaforte Bioprodutos which became its subsidiary in Brazil, producing microbial biopesticides, parasitoids, and predator insects. Koppert Brazil competes with BUG in this market, as it also produces and commercializes the Trichogramma variety of parasitic wasps.

The use of parasitic wasps is able to compete to a certain extent with chemical pest control methods, which remain the most widely used method in agriculture. One problem with pesticides is that they have a broad spectrum of action and kill both pests and their natural predators. Furthermore, with continued use of pesticides, pests adapt to their chemical environment and develop resistance which makes them less effective, just as bacteria develop resistance to antibiotics in humans. This forces farmers to spend increasing amounts of money to use larger quantities of pesticides, while companies develop additional chemical compounds to tackle pests’ resistance.

Notably, a turning point for BUG’s business came about in 2012 when Brazilian soy farmers were confronted with the resistance of a Helicover caterpillar to pesticides. Before entering Brazil, the pest had devastated crops in other countries. In the first year in Brazil, losses amounted to $2 billion and pesticides failed to control further damage. As farmers looked desperately for solutions, BUG already possessed a fully developed bioagent that had controlled the same pest in Australia. Using the parasite wasps, farmers were able to control Helicover and reduce the use of pesticides by 60 percent in soy crops. For every five airborne releases of parasite wasps, only one crop dusting of pesticides was carried out. In 2015, BUG launched a new bioagent for pest control in soy crops (Telenomus podisi) with a control efficacy of up to 80 percent.

The soy caterpillar invasion was a window of opportunity for BUG to expand its business given the success of its bioagents. Compared to incumbents in the agroindustry sector, the company had very little resources for marketing and research and development. Multinational companies organize conferences and social events to market their products to farmers. Moreover, they invest substantially in internal and external research and development.

BUG does not have an internal R&D unit and relies heavily on publicly funded research. Therefore, it establishes partnerships with academic research units and other small biological control companies to carry out R&D. Only after getting public seed funding and later private venture capital did BUG conduct research that revealed its business potential was higher than they thought.

In the aftermath of the soy crop devastation, BUG expanded its target market to reach large-scale farmers and, in 2 years, extended its coverage to over half a million hectares of land in Brazil. BUG’s bioagents have an effectiveness rate of 90 percent in eliminating pests. In 2011, the biofactories were working at full capacity and expanded in 2012 due to growing demand in order to produce enough to double the acreage covered. The production of bioagents rose from 27 billion wasps in 2011 to 150 billion in 2014. This growth path is remarkable for a company who had planned to focus on niche and organic farming markets, notwithstanding the recent growth of these sectors in Brazil.

Recently, however, agricultural regulation and policies in many countries have promoted integrated pest management programs, which incentivize environmental friendly forms of pest control along with pest forecasting and monitoring in detriment of the use of chemical pesticides. Organic farming and biodynamic farming are market niches that have used biological pest control methods for a long time due to the sustainability values they are based on as well as to the regulations and standards that define organic production conditions.

Nonetheless, variations of these methods are penetrating conventional agriculture practices. BUG sees its biological methods as a fit to the integrated pest management programs that combine biological and chemical control with the use of seeds that are genetically engineered to resist pests. Yet, recently agrochemical incumbents acquired biological control companies in order to integrate these companies’ technological capabilities and product portfolios in their crop protection product portfolios. Incumbents’ ability to acquire smaller innovative companies can be problematic for BUG’s differentiated value proposition given that farmers have shown reluctance in adopting a fully non-chemical pest control method.

Finally, another challenge for BUG is the expansion of their portfolio to increase the number of parasite species. BUG’s production method is scalable within the portfolio of biological agents that they commercialize. In Brazil, the company uses four different species of bioagents authorized for commercial production, while globally around 250 species are used. However, expanding the portfolio of biological agents can be determinant for BUG, as farmers might resist using products from different companies. Agrochemical incumbents have been keen to offer complete turn-key solutions for crop management that include seeds, fertilization, and pest control in the same crop protection package.

BUG’s bioagents favor the natural balance between pest and predator, ensuring the regular growth of crops and limiting damages caused by pests as their proliferation runs out of control. The biological control is adapted to each type of pest and crop, contrarily to pesticides to which pests develop resistance. BUG markets its parasite wasps as an initial, almost preventive, measure so that farmers avoid incurring costs with pesticides and their potential consequences.

Farm produce grown without pesticides can be more valuable for consumers who are both sensitive to sustainability matters and willing to pay more for them. Given the search for farm produce with lower environmental impact and better quality, combined with bioagents’ high pest elimination rates, BUG’s potential market “is Brazil’s entire $7 billion pesticide market” according to board member and investor Francisco Jardim. Crop by crop, acre by acre, these bugs are ready to take over the world.

In Brazil, the world’s second largest agricultural area, chemical control is the most used tactic for controlling pests in farming, which is contrary to the global trend of producing healthier food, while respecting the consumer, the workers, and the environment. In Brazil, a strong culture in farming prefers the use of pesticides for controlling pests. Biological control with parasitoids was limited to small farming areas and greenhouses. Our big project was to overflow large agricultural areas with those biological agents, and compete with pesticides in soy, cotton, corn, sugarcane, tomato, and other crops. To make that dream come true we have persisted in orienting toward and informing about the results and advantages associated with integrating biological control with traditional methods used by farmers. We have been obtaining excellent results with this work.

If we could point out a contribution made by BUG, it would be the fact that never before had biological pest control been so much talked about in Brazil until BUG was created. It has taken us years of persistence, determination, and work until we were able to reach the positive results that we currently have. In a 1-year period, we organized more than 100 talks and technical meetings to spread the results and advantages of adopting biological control technology.

Throughout these years, it is undeniable that BUG has contributed to the advance of biological control in Brazil. We have been always earnest regarding the work with our technology, very technical-oriented in searching for innovations and improvements that would turn into earnings for our company, clients, and the society at large.

Currently, we are working on the development of a new technology that enables the production of an egg parasitoid (Trissolcus basalis and Telenomus podisi) to control pests that attack soy, a crop that takes up over 32 million hectares of land in Brazil. The first step was to establish partnerships with Brazilian universities and research centers that have been carrying out basic research in this technology. We have started this pilot-project, in collaboration with other groups, to implement the search for improvement steps that will lead to success. In 2014, we released the parasitoid Telenomus podisi in crop areas larger than 10,000 hectares. Based on recent assessments, we foresee a success scenario for the coming years.

Our most important step was not giving up in the first 6 years of BUG. Apparently, there was no possibility to get financial return, but work and persistence showed, in time, new windows of opportunity opened and then we started to harvest the fruits of that work and persistence. Currently, we are in a very different situation. After announcing our biological pest control for soy pests, we have been sought out by dozens of farmers who want to use this technology. All of them will be very well served.