Episode #212
Ronald Valentin: The Natural Power of Biological Control

Our Ronald Valentin interview has been edited and condensed for clarity:

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Dave Chapman interviews Ronald Valentin in Vermont, Summer 2024

Dave Chapman 0:00
Welcome to The Real Organic Podcast. I’m talking today with Ronald Valentin. I’ve known Ronald for many years. I’m not quite sure how many, Ronald, but 20 something like that. Ronald is an entomologist, and he has worked with me on the biological control of pest problems in our greenhouses. [inaudible 00:00:28] once named you the best entomologist in North America. That was a high praise, but I think it was well-deserved. Welcome, Ronald.

Ronald Valentin 0:38
Thank you.

Dave Chapman 0:41
How did you get into this? Did you grow up in greenhouses?

Ronald Valentin 0:46
Yes. My interest really came to me through my parents. My parents ran a greenhouse operation in the Netherlands. In the early 70s, my father was struggling with pest problems in his tomatoes and cucumber crops, and there was a lot of resistance issues.

Ronald Valentin 0:46
Resistance to the pesticides he was using?

Ronald Valentin 1:14
Correct. A lot of spraying and not seeing the results that he would hope for. So, he said that there has to be a better way. So, in 1971 he kind of embarked on trying biological control agents. The first one that he used was Encarsia formosa for whitefly control. Back in those days, growers could actually get a starter culture at the Dutch Research Institute in Aalsmeer, the Netherlands, which some growers were doing. In those early days, they had to kind of rear their own biological control agents. So, there was not a lot of commercial production or no commercial production.

Ronald Valentin 2:01
Just for people who don’t have experience with this, Ronald. Encarsia formosa is a tiny parasitic wasp. Could you just explain how that works? Like you put in the wasp and what happens then.

Ronald Valentin 2:16
The wasps are basically a parasitoid that reproduces inside the whitefly larva and then later on pupa. In that process, you produce a new wasp. By releasing those wasps in the greenhouse, they go and search. They do not control the adult whiteflies – they control the larva and the pupa – which results then into a new wasp. In essence, it’s kind of creating a little ecosystem in the greenhouse by releasing these wasps, and then after about two generations, you have a self-sustaining situation in the greenhouse, where these wasps are able to control the whitefly.

Dave Chapman 3:07
This is mirroring what happens outside in nature. Every insect has a predator and a parasite that will help keep it in check and balance.

Ronald Valentin 3:21
Correct.

Dave Chapman 3:23
I’m sorry, we’ll go back to that: the story of when you were young, and your father tried Encarsia for the first time.

Ronald Valentin 3:32
He did that for several years. In the beginning, obviously, there was a lot of learning. He had a small greenhouse where he grew tobacco plants to produce those parasitic wasps. Then later on, he also started to use a predatory mite for spider mite control, called Phytoseiulus persimilis. But in 1978 my father decided to expand his greenhouse space, and at that point he decided to start buying in his biological control agents.

Dave Chapman 4:12
So just, again, a little bit of sense of how things have changed, when your father decided to expand, how big was the greenhouse before he expanded?

Ronald Valentin 4:23
The original greenhouse was about two acres. He expanded that to about four acres. So, the little greenhouse that was there, where he produced these beneficial insects, was in the way for that expansion.

Dave Chapman 4:38
He grew tobacco there, because that was a really good place for the Encarsia to breed on, because the whitefly loved it?

Dave Chapman 4:47
Correct. There is quite a bit of difference in the amount of eggs that a whitefly can lay on different plant species. To put it in perspective, one female whitefly lays about eight times more eggs on a tobacco plant than on a tomato plant. So, in a tomato plant, it’s roughly about 100 eggs per female in their lifetime. On tobacco, it’s about 800 eggs. You can produce a lot more wasps on the tobacco. Obviously that tobacco had no commercial value. The real reason for choosing the tobacco is to get a high production rate of wasp per square foot or per square meter of greenhouse space in that production space.

Dave Chapman 5:36
He started by producing his own beneficials. It’s kind of wonderful. That doesn’t happen so much anymore. Now, there are big companies that produce these and sell them to people who run greenhouses. Then, when he went from two acres to four acres, suddenly he became a customer?

Ronald Valentin 5:54
Correct. What is really interesting is that, on a global level, there are a couple of big players in the biological control world. But two of those big players actually started exactly that way. They were actually greenhouse growers, growing tomatoes or cucumbers, and at some point, they gave up growing their crop and started to completely focus on producing beneficial insects for other growers. It’s a really interesting development, how that went over time.

Dave Chapman 6:31
Your father could have gone that direction instead. He was at that same time, and he decided to grow tomatoes instead of Encarsia and persimilis?

Ronald Valentin 6:40
Correct.

Dave Chapman 6:41
All right, interesting. What was that Koppert? Was that one of the companies?

Ronald Valentin 6:44
Yeah. Mr. Koppert started in the late 1960s and he was a cucumber grower, and around mid-1970s he gave up growing cucumbers and completely dedicated his focus on producing beneficial insects and mites. They are probably – on a global level now – one of the biggest players. They export to many, many countries. They have the third generation that is now in their business.

Dave Chapman 7:25
Before Mr. Koppert and your father started to breed Encarsia, people in greenhouses were almost always just relying on pesticides to control these pests, because there was no balance – there was no Encarsia in the greenhouse?

Ronald Valentin 7:44
For the most part, yes. There’s a couple of things that happened in the 50s, 60s and 70s, with the greenhouse production. Like if I look at my grandfather, he didn’t just grow tomatoes and cucumbers, but he had a multitude on crops that he grew. So, there was already a lot of biodiversity in there. But at the same time, when we were starting to see more and more of those mono crops, obviously pest problems started to become more severe. This is also happening right at the time that the chemical revolution happened, where the development of new pesticides was, in essence, big Business to control these more mono culture situations.

Dave Chapman 8:44
I’m really interested now. Your grand grandparents, what crops would they grow in a greenhouse, side by side?

Ronald Valentin 8:51
My great grandparents grew grapes. They were doing table grapes in greenhouses, but they also grew tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, cauliflower, spinach, and radish. They had a multitude on crops. Right around the early 60s is when we started to see more and more scaling up of greenhouses, even though that scaling up has even progressed even more so since then. So, more gutter-connected greenhouses, rather than having individual smaller sections, having larger sections. Again, focusing more and more on one or two specific crops.

Dave Chapman 9:41
When you say, ‘gutter-connected,’ just for people aren’t familiar, what would a big greenhouse be now? One structure, one room. How big would that be?

Ronald Valentin 9:52
Today?

Dave Chapman 9:53
Today.

Ronald Valentin 9:54
Today, there are greenhouse sections that are 10 hectares – 25 acres. That’s becoming more and more common. Again, back in the day that my father took over from my grandfather, a large section would be half an acre, so that’s a quarter of a hectare. So, much smaller sections.

Dave Chapman 10:18
When your father took over, they were still growing in the ground?

Ronald Valentin 10:21
Correct.

Dave Chapman 10:22
It was in your father’s lifetime that the hydroponic revolution happened?

Ronald Valentin 10:27
Yes. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, there was a lot of concern about the use of Methyl bromide for soil sterilization. Kind of cleaning or trying to create a zero tolerance with root nematodes. That’s when people started to look at hydroponic production. So, to basically not have to use Methyl bromide.

Dave Chapman 11:02
Marc Vergeldt told me about when he was a young guy working in a greenhouse, and somebody said, “Try this new system.” He said, “We had one section, and we thought we’re never going to do this,” because the plants didn’t look nearly as good as the ones in the soil. But then the yield turned out to be 25% higher. Of course, the next year, the whole greenhouse was hydroponic, and they never looked back. It’s interesting these things keep changing, and the changes create problems as well as offer solutions.

Dave Chapman 11:37
People went to growing a mono crop in a greenhouse because the production went up if they did that. Because they could get the climate just dialed in for that crop. But it makes it harder and harder to run a biological system. That’s where the insectaries come in, saying, “Well, we’ll grow the insects and bring them in. That will create the balance.” Is that successful in your opinion?

Ronald Valentin 12:07
Yes. Again, of course you have to be really in tune. What obviously is really important is that to be successful, you need to be having a very proactive mindset. When you’re already having a raging insect issue, it’s really hard to catch up. So, releases need to start early. I think also more so in the 90s and the early 2000s from the pesticide industry, there was a kind of a focus on trying to find chemical compounds that are compatible with some of the biological control agents.

Ronald Valentin 13:06
My thought process about that is that it’s really very hard to do that, because if you interfere with that web – and it is literally a web, it’s all interconnected – that one way or another, something is affecting something if you start to go down that road. So, my thought process has kind of always been to use BCAs, Biological Control Agents, as a first line of defense for everything. To really make an effort not to go down that, what I call, ‘the slippery slope.’ I think that is a really important thing of success, too – part of that success.

Dave Chapman 13:56
That’s an interesting thing. We’ve talked about this before, but just to say that idea that…if you cheat just a little bit, the consequences can be devastating that the whole biological system starts to unravel just with a little bit of pesticides going, “I just want to spot-spray my problem areas.” Did I get that right?

Ronald Valentin 14:20
That’s exactly right. Again, I think in the biological control industry, they have really also focused on that to – whenever there was a new pest problem or a new problem – to try to find biological solutions for those problems as quickly as possible. We talked about Encarsia for whitefly control – the little wasp for whitefly control. Currently we’re using not only Encarsia for whitefly control, but there are also other biological control agents.

Ronald Valentin 14:57
One is called Eretmocerus is which is also a small wasp. Both of those are parasitoids, so they rely on reproduction through their host. But then there is another biological control agent called Dicyphus hesperus, and in Europe, they have a very similar bug called Macrolophus, that is actually a predator. That predator actually really preys on the whitefly larva. So, it actually is able to basically feed on the juices of these whitefly larva. It has a piercing mouth part and basically probes that into a whitefly larva, and then sucks the juices out of those larvae.

Ronald Valentin 15:49
I often refer to that as ‘the pitchfork approach.’ The more prongs you have on the pitchfork, the more reliable your biological control system becomes because you’re not relying on just one biological control agents, but on more biological control agents.

Dave Chapman 16:08
You’re starting to replicate a natural system. It’s okay. So many interesting places to go, but one thing that’s interesting that we’ve talked about is that…and we’re talking about conventional chemical hydroponic greenhouses for a minute. Even in those, they’ve gone mostly biological at this point. How much would you say…? I’ve been to a lot of conventional greenhouses, and they always say, “Well, we’re practically organic.” And then they always say, “Oh, we can’t go in that greenhouse. We just bombed it.”

Dave Chapman 16:47
I go, “Well, you’re practically organic, but not really.” So, there is a real difference there. But I’m curious, because the whole bio control industry – which is a big thing – the insectaries are selling to virtually every greenhouse vegetable company in the world, and probably the flowers too, that they do all use bio control, but they also have a chemical safety net. Would you say that it’s a lot better than it used to be, but is there still a fair amount of chemistry involved in bringing a crop home, or is that mostly not?

Ronald Valentin 17:29
I would say that it is really focused on biological control and make that work. I think the grower community guys also realized these issues with that pesticides are really not – no matter how you look at it – there are very, very few compatible pesticides with a biological control system. That also means that their focus is more on utilizing those biological control agents as a first line of defense.

Ronald Valentin 18:06
To answer your question, I think it is very minimal. I can’t say that it would never happen, and I can’t speak for every grower, obviously, but it’s very minimal. I think where it sometimes gets a little challenging is if new pest problems come to the horizon where we don’t have clear, commercial, available biological control agents for. I think that is also why it’s so important that predator that I just talked about, they are typically not as specific on what they feed on. They are what we call generalist biological control agents. They don’t only feed on whitefly, but they also would feed on thrips, moth eggs and other potential problems.

Ronald Valentin 19:05
That, again, makes the whole system a lot more secure. I often refer to those biological control agents as the stabilizer of the entire system, because they bring a certain stability not only with one particular pest problem, but also with other pest problems.

Dave Chapman 19:28
Another leg of the natural system that is starting to be brought into greenhouses to varying degrees is diversity of plants. You said, well, for your grandparents, they had many crops in the greenhouse. Now, for many, if not most commercial greenhouses, there’s still going to be one crop or two crops in the greenhouse, but they’re now being plantings of other things like Alyssum or Mullein that are included as hosts for friends. So, could you talk about that? That’s such an interesting evolution.

Ronald Valentin 20:17
Banker plants, as they call these plants, that development started in the late 90s, early 2000s. The first banker plant system that was kind of developed was for aphid control, primarily focused in pepper and cucumber greenhouses. One of the reasons why that development came is because aphids developed so quickly. That it is very hard to be reactive with just wasp being purchased or bought in from a supplier, and the amount of wasp that would be needed to actually keep the level of damage and the threshold low enough so that the grower would not have too much economical damage was a real challenge.

Ronald Valentin 21:11
The development of that system was based on bringing in cereal aphids on a cereal plant so that could be barley or oats or rye that only can survive on grasses – on cereals. At the same time these aphids…so these aphids do not pose a threat to the crop that the grower is growing. Unless you’re an ornamental grass grower, it becomes a little dicey. But if you grow tomatoes or cucumbers or petunias or Gerbera daisies, these aphids will not form a threat to the crop. But at the same time, these aphids are an excellent host for the wasps.

Ronald Valentin 21:53
In essence, you create an open rearing system in the greenhouse of these wasps being present at all times, even before you have an aphid species that is harming your crop. That also increased the success rate of these situations quite dramatically.

Dave Chapman 22:13
Yeah, absolutely. In the rearing of the banker plants, which is a brilliant thing to put on aphid that only lives on the grass and not on the tomato, is there a particular bio control that responds to that situation in something like aphid lilies or Aphidius. Is there one in particular that you go, “This is a perfect marriage?”

Ronald Valentin 22:46
That aphid that is on the barley or oats is called Cherry-Oat Aphid (Rhopalosiphum padi) that aphid is particularly a good host for Aphidius colemani and Aphidius matricariae. Both of those aphidius species are very good in attacking the smaller aphid species that you would, for example, get in a pepper or a cucumber crop, like the green peach aphid or the black melon aphid.

Dave Chapman 23:22
The Aphidius ervi wouldn’t do well on those aphids?

Ronald Valentin 23:25
Correct.

Dave Chapman 23:26
So not helpful for tomatoes?

Ronald Valentin 23:30
That is not helpful for tomatoes. However, they have found another aphid species that can be done in a similar way called, Sitobion avenae. Which is a larger aphid that also is very specific on cereals, that is a good host for Aphidius ervi and Aphelinus abdominalis, which are, again, two wasps that can be used for potato aphid (Macrosiphum euphorbiae) in tomato crops. That development from the late 1990s, early 2000s is now also making its way into tomato crops with a different aphidius species. I could see that the development of more banker plant systems to be utilized in greenhouses, that development will continue to grow.

Dave Chapman 24:22
You showed me a beautiful picture of a gutter hanging overhead in a large greenhouse. There were Mullein plants and there were beautiful Alyssum spilling over. These plants were being grown specifically to be bankers for specific beneficial insects. I’m curious, and this is all wonderful. It’s developing all this technology of life to start to more and more mirror a natural system where there are no pest problems, because everything is in balance in an undisturbed system, there’s some of everybody.

Dave Chapman 25:07
We talked about what happened in Africa when a Mealybug was accidentally introduced from South America, and there was nobody to eat it, and there was nobody to parasitize it. So, it exploded and was taking over the continent, until they found some of the right beneficials to bring in and breed and release. Then it created a balanced equilibrium, and pesticides were failing. This works better than pesticides.

Dave Chapman 25:38
Absolutely. I think the Alyssum that you mentioned too, the Alyssum is also used more and more in greenhouse production as well. That plant is typically not introduced in the greenhouse with already beneficials on it. Alyssum or Lobularia maritima – is the scientific name of Alyssum – that plant is typically planted in the greenhouse to actually attract natural enemies in from the outside. Alyssum is very attractive to Syrphid flies and lacewings and ladybugs, which all contribute to biological control.

Dave Chapman 25:38
Some of the plants are actually brought into the greenhouse to attract natural enemies into the greenhouse from outside. Alyssum is also used in outside agriculture in, for example, strawberry fields. Where strawberry growers instead of having only strawberries, is that every acre or acre and a half, one of the raised beds is no longer strawberry plants, but Alyssum plants that they plant in the field with their strawberries. It’s, again, to enhance biodiversity and enhance natural bio control that is natural. That’s from Mother Nature.

Dave Chapman 27:03
Let’s take it one step further now. I was at a workshop a couple weeks ago with a woman named Christine Jones. She’s a soil microbiologist from Australia – fantastic. It was a revelation to me. I had heard before, but it was so rich what she was talking about. One of the things she was talking about, it wasn’t about insects, but it was about plant health and soil health.

Dave Chapman 27:31
She said all soil health comes from basically exudates. Something that’s produced through photosynthesis and the photosynthates are exuded through the roots, and it feeds the bacteria and the fungi living right around that root in the soil, and wonderful things happen. If you took away the plants, there is no soil health – there is no soil life.

Dave Chapman 27:56
But she was saying, yes, and to have any plant is a wonderful thing, but to have a diversity of plants is a much better thing, and that you get a diverse microbiome in the soil, because each plant variety has its own microbiome that it will feed a certain kind of bacteria and a certain kind of fungi, but when you have 10 plants growing there, now there’s some greater magic that happens.

Dave Chapman 28:29
Obviously we need to balance that if we’re doing this commercially, but how do we do this without taking too much away from the crop that we’re actually going to sell? There’s a balance there. But I want to ask you…it’s great. We now have a Mullein plant, we now have an Alyssum plant. I know now I’m speaking only to organic growers, because the chemical growers are all hydroponic at this point. They’re all in plastic bags sitting on hanging gutters with drip stakes in them, and that’s just how it’s done.

Dave Chapman 29:07
There’s no soil life. That’s not how the plant feeds itself. But in a system where that is what you’re counting on, it appears that finding a way to create a greater diversity of plants, besides just your tomatoes or your cucumbers, might lead to very beneficial outcomes. It will also lead, I suspect, to very beneficial outcomes for your bio control, too. That’s my question. If I said, “Well, I’m going to plant clover in my path, and I’m going to have a bunch of field radish, basil, Alyssum and whatever growing in the beds,” under the tomato crop, would you go, “That sounds like a good idea,” or would you go, “That’s a good idea, but I’m very worried about this?” What would you be worried about? Do you think that that would be a great benefit for the bio control?

Ronald Valentin 30:05
I think we’re still in the early stages of seeing these things happen in some of the larger commercial facilities that grow hydroponically. But I think also in hydroponic production, besides what I call the micro biological controls, we also see more and more, or we have seen more and more development also on the microbiological control side, which basically means that some of those fungi and bacteria that are in the soil, that they have been able to isolate those and actually turn those into micro biological control products that can be used in hydroponic production.

Ronald Valentin 30:54
But I could see that more bio diversity that could benefit whatever we’re doing inside greenhouses. I think it’s even going further than that, that we also see developments in Europe, specifically the Netherlands, but also in the UK, of creating biodiversity plantings, both around greenhouses, but also in field production – in agriculture. Where farms and greenhouses are surrounded by seed mixes that are sown that create, first of all, I think, a more beautiful way than just grass around the greenhouse, but create biodiversity around the greenhouse.

Ronald Valentin 31:45
In some cases, there have been worries about, “Are those plants also going to attract thrips and aphids?” They certainly can, but again, as long as the beneficials are there too – their natural enemies are there too – and you can create that balance in there, then there’s, again, less threat of pest problems coming in from outside the greenhouse en masse and disturbing whatever we are trying to do inside the greenhouses. I think we’re going to see a lot more development of biodiversity around greenhouses and around agriculture as well.

Dave Chapman 32:22
That’s interesting. Famously, if you’re growing an eggplant in the greenhouse, it’s going to be covered with everything: whitefly and it’s going to be covered with spider mites. I don’t know what it is about that plant that makes it so very attractive. Of course, you can turn them into little mini insectaries. But I’m just curious, do you think there are some plants you go, “I just assume you didn’t put that into your mix, because it’s a super attractive thing to certain pests.” Or do you think, “No, it’s all going to balance out as long as there’s the diversity?”

Ronald Valentin 33:03
I think you mentioned eggplants, and there was actually a specific variety of eggplants called Bombino, which stays relatively short. That is actually used in commercial tomato facilities not only as a banker plant, but also as an indicator plant. Rather than only using sticky cards to kind of detect what’s going on with pest levels, they actually put some of those miniature eggplants in and monitor those eggplants for the appearance of pests, because they’re more attracted to the eggplant than to the tomato crop.

Ronald Valentin 33:41
You mentioned whitefly. Tobacco and eggplant are very similar in how attractive they are for whitefly, and also their reproduction. On both it’s about 800 eggs per female. Using those plants, then, initially as a trap plant, but then secondarily, as a banker plant. That is actually already happening. It’s really interesting to see that these developments continue to come.

Ronald Valentin 34:13
Eggplants are also very attractive for potato aphids, for example, that we see in tomato crops. I think for the different crop segments, or for the different crops you grow, you might use a different combination of banker plants or plants that you put in the greenhouse. For example, in greenhouse bell peppers, you would do something very different than you would do in cucumbers or tomatoes.

Dave Chapman 34:41
What would you do differently in your opinion?

Ronald Valentin 34:43
If we look at greenhouse bell peppers, whitefly, for example, are not as attracted to peppers. Whitefly can be there, but they’re typically very easily controlled. Your banker plant mix that you would use in a tomato crop would be heavily towards Mullein, whereas the focus in bell peppers is much more on aphid control, because bell peppers can get five different aphid species. Where in tomatoes, we typically only find potato aphid, in bell peppers, you can get the red morph for the green peach aphid, black melon aphid, potato aphid and foxglove aphid.

Ronald Valentin 35:36
All these aphids have their specific needs from a microbiological control perspective. In bell peppers, you probably would use less Mullein but more Alyssum and more aphid banker plants. So, it’s a little bit different from crop to crop.

Dave Chapman 35:57
Ronald, I’m curious. If you retired and you had a little 3,000 sq ft greenhouse to play in, would you grow hydroponically, or would you grow in the ground?

Ronald Valentin 36:12
Well, I think a 3000 sq ft greenhouse would be very small to actually do it properly hydroponically. I think in a situation like that, and I would obviously not grow a mono crop. It’s actually in on my wish list to build a small greenhouse in our backyard. It won’t be huge. It will be on the small side. But I’m also not looking at just growing tomatoes. I would have a few tomato plants and maybe melon, a few peppers, and a few this and a few that.

Dave Chapman 36:50
It’d be for you to grow the food to eat.

Ronald Valentin 36:53
Correct. That’s exactly what it would be.

Dave Chapman 36:57
But it would be a really fun classroom and playground also, because you could play with all these ideas and see, “Well, what if I did plant this under that, and what would happen?”

Ronald Valentin 37:10
Yeah, exactly.

Dave Chapman 37:12
Interesting. I’m kind of fascinated by the almost inexorable pressure of things, to move into a specialized crop and to expand it in terms of the amount that one person or one company is managing. There’s a movement right now – a small farm movement that is real and is happening – and there are a lot of small farms, very small, couple of acres vegetables typically. Harder to do this with dairy. They’re making a living through CSAs and farmers markets and things like that.

Dave Chapman 37:59
Outside of that specialized area and which is expanding, but nonetheless, there’s this other world in which everything is becoming more centralized, bigger. What’s a typical greenhouse operation now compared to when it was two acres for your father? Twenty acres? Thirty acres?

Ronald Valentin 38:33
I can’t remember the exact numbers from a report that I saw from my brother-in-law and sister, who still run an operation in the Netherlands. They have about 18 acres right now, which is roughly about six hectares. They’re one of the smaller growers right now. Compared to where my parents came from to what my brother-in-law and sister have right now, I don’t know exactly where that’s going.

Dave Chapman 39:06
Why do you think that happened? Why do you think that 18 acres of glass greenhouse is now a small operation?

Ronald Valentin 39:16
I think it had a lot to do with trying to reduce cost and the cost of production per kilo or per pound of product that they are producing. A lot around automation and equipment. If you have to invest €100,000 or $120,000 in a grading line, that’s much easier to have a return on investment from a labor standpoint. To do that on a 18-acre operation versus a six-acre operation or a four-acre or two-acre operation. A two-acre operation, it’s very difficult to justify that investment.

Ronald Valentin 40:03
That’s just an example of just a grading line. If you look at automation, heating systems, trying to conserve heat, the equipment that is used for that – hot water storage tanks, boiler systems, irrigation systems – all of these things kind of pushed it in that direction of monoculture and trying to reduce cost per kilo or per pound of product being produced.

Dave Chapman 40:37
What’s interesting is that the same time that we’ve become more and more efficient with labor and with capital, the food that we’re growing is worse and worse quality. I don’t mean in appearance or in shelf life, I just mean in taste – that’s the most obvious thing. I’m guessing that the tomatoes that your father grew would stand out on the market today as being a lot better than what everyone is growing because the breeders are responding to the demand for yield and not for taste. I believe taste reflects nutrition.

Ronald Valentin 41:24
I think ultimately, what is really important is that there needs to be a certain level of quality of product, and that also includes taste. This is, I think one of the reasons why, probably about 15 years ago in Europe, and specifically in the Netherlands, the auction system started to fall apart, because everything was pulled into a certain size of tomato. Growers who were doing a better job on focusing on taste, and maybe were not so worried about just getting that maximum production and being more focused on quality and taste, were pulled into the same product as another grower who would not be worried about necessarily the quality or the taste.

Dave Chapman 42:23
It was the commodity. In the auction system, you bid on lots of pounds of tomatoes for your supermarket chain. Now you’re saying there’s more identification of brands, and the brands are competing based on quality, including taste.

Ronald Valentin 42:46
Yeah. I think the consumer have become smarter. Also, I think the grocery chains have become smarter too, that, ultimately, they also need to look at sell through and what ends up in their store, that it actually moves and it continues to move.

Dave Chapman 43:07
In my experience, the chains are not getting smarter, they’re getting bigger. Let’s pick Walmart – perfect example. Walmart is incapable of buying from somebody like me. Simply, it doesn’t work in their system. They’re looking for somebody who will provide them year-round tomatoes at a much larger scale. If the difference between my tomatoes and their tomatoes is great and it is. There’s no question about it. Everybody in the market knows our tomatoes taste much better than those tomatoes, and yet they will drop us.

Dave Chapman 43:09
I think that there’s something that happens where we don’t just change the system. The system changes us. After a while, people forget what a tomato even can taste like, unless they’re fortunate enough to have a farmers’ market or a farm stand they can go to or a CSA. So, it’s a bit of a tragedy. It’s not an easy thing to reverse or change. It’s like these two economic systems, and one is the system consolidation, where the greenhouses just get bigger and bigger and bigger and at the same time, there are these small gardens that are doing something different.

Dave Chapman 44:33
I don’t know where it all goes. I really don’t. I’ve lost probably maybe four chains that we sold to in the last 20 years. It’s always because they got bought out by a bigger multinational. They simply stopped buying from us because we were not cheap enough. Not because their customers didn’t want to buy everything that we sold to them. So, it’s interesting. I don’t know where we go from here.

Dave Chapman 45:07
I would really like to make sure we have time to talk about “Silent Spring.” You told me that you’ve probably given away 50 copies of “Silent Spring,” Rachel Carson’s amazing book written in 1962, I think. Could we talk about why that book is important to you? What did it mean for you? How did you find it? Why do you give it to everybody?

Ronald Valentin 45:31
I think, it is a great story. I think Rachel Carson really worded it very well on what the potential impacts are of what was going on at that time already. I think one of the things that is really unique to this book is that she brought awareness already in 1962 on some of the issues that we were dealing with. For me, it really speaks, because it is what I do in daily life. I really try to use Mother Nature and biological control agents to its full extent wherever I can. Wherever I can try to influence that, that’s kind of my focus. Some of the impacts that Dr. Rachel Carson is mentioning in her book were quite dramatic.

Dave Chapman 46:40
Actually not doctor. She never finished her PhD, which is one of the things they attacked her for. ‘They’ being the chemical industry. But she had done the work, but she had to stop to support her family. Talk about, what was the message of “Silent Spring”?

Ronald Valentin 47:00
I think the message of “Silent Spring” is that the more we are trying to do things from a synthetic perspective, there is always a price to pay. No matter how you look at it, and we see that in in greenhouse production right now, is that there is nothing more powerful than actually biological control and letting nature do its work. I don’t know if I worked that correctly, but I think the message out of the book is very clear about that.

Dave Chapman 47:49
Well, I’m just going to go with this, and then we’ll come back to Rachel in a minute. The message to you it’s very clear. You see this and you understand in these biological systems, you can create balance. It does work, and yet, it’s such a struggle, isn’t it? You say it’s obvious, but it obviously isn’t obvious to many people. Many people that you’ve worked with in your career. As you said to me, their first reaction when they see a pest is to reach for the spray can. So, it requires thinking differently, doesn’t it?

Ronald Valentin 48:32
Yes, it does. I think that is what you just mentioned, is I think that is a culture that has been created, probably after the Second World War, where when we see a problem, that first question is, “What can I spray?” I think that brings me back to what my father did in 1971, is, “Wait a minute. Is there something else that can solve this problem, rather than a spray?” I think that is really important to understand that.

Ronald Valentin 49:25
You’re absolutely right. We’ve seen also now the ornamental industry – the floral industry – that since the late 2000s starting to implement biological control. Obviously, those are non-food crops, but I think the big driver there was to pesticide resistance when they couldn’t control certain pest problems like thrips, for example. They were kind of backed up against the wall, and had very little other options, that’s when they started to look at, “Hey, maybe we need to look at biological control.”

Ronald Valentin 49:25
That led from using biological control for one pest problem, into now having growers that are…I don’t think there’s such a thing as organic ornamental production, but growers that are simply using very little or no synthetic pesticides in ornamental crops.

Speaker 1 49:25
I think there is such a thing as organic ornamental. But, yes, I understand it’s not widespread. You told me earlier about a test that was done on a particular pesticide and the decreasing kill rate. Do you remember? Could you throw that out?

Ronald Valentin 50:48
Yeah. Again, I’ve seen that in the past how quickly, for example, whitefly can build up resistance to certain pesticides. Where with a first application, you might get a 70% or 75% knockdown, and with the next generation, it drops down to 50% and the next generation after that, it drops down to 20% or 25%. Then the next generation, there is virtually no susceptibility anymore.

Ronald Valentin 51:23
It can happen very, very quickly. Obviously, if you look at the reproductive rate of insects in a tomato crop, one female whitefly after two generations, we’re looking at roughly about 4,800 to 5,000 whiteflies. So, if only a very small percentage of that whitefly is not susceptible to a product, then resistance develops very, very quickly.

Dave Chapman 51:58
Can we go back now to “Silent Spring,” because I don’t think we’re done?

Ronald Valentin 52:03
Sure.

Dave Chapman 52:03
Not if you’ve given 50 copies of it to people. Rachel Carson is a fascinating story because she was brutally attacked, and it wasn’t personal. It was a calculated campaign by the chemical industry to destroy her reputation. They attacked her for not actually being a PhD, not being a real scientist. They attacked her for being a lesbian. It was very personal. They did anything they could to make her seem like a flake, and they failed, actually. Thank God.

Dave Chapman 52:44
It was an unsuccessful campaign. It’s been successful against other people, but it was not successful against her. She got a lot of hate mail and things. She put herself as the tip of the spear for that challenge to an orthodoxy that had developed where the way that we deal with insects is we kill them with with pesticides. What was her idea? What was the title even from “Silent Spring.”

Ronald Valentin 53:24
I think the original story in the book, is about a town somewhere, where things initially are all in balance. Then at some point, things start to change. If you look at what the story goes through is that the town becomes silent. That’s how I understood.

Dave Chapman 54:04
The birds are no longer singing.

Ronald Valentin 54:06
Correct. So, the town literally becomes almost like dead from a biodiversity perspective.

Dave Chapman 54:16
But, in this book, she manages to offer a perspective that for you is compelling enough that you’re giving this to person after person that you work with. To people in this business of growing food in greenhouses.

Ronald Valentin 54:31
Yeah. It’s kind of trying to bring awareness that there is a different way, and that there is, without a doubt, a better way.

Dave Chapman 54:54
Syngenta preaches frequently that the world will starve if it goes organic. That they believe that what they sell, which is pesticides primarily, although also chemical fertilizers, is essential to our success as a species. Do you think there’s truth in that?

Ronald Valentin 55:20
There’s obviously a lot of discussion about growth of population, and how are we going to keep up with producing enough food for everyone. But I look at specifically greenhouse production, and how far we have come, I think the greenhouse industry or protected crops, I should say, is probably quite a bit ahead of the game compared to agriculture outside. We’ve come a long way from where we were 2010, 20 and 30 years ago, and even longer.

Ronald Valentin 56:07
Let’s face it, there’s a lot less synthetic products available for greenhouse production. I think we’re on the right track, but there’s still a lot of ground to cover, I think. I don’t know if that answers your question.

Dave Chapman 56:32
Well, a little bit. I’m curious about how reading that book might change people. But what you just said, I just want to touch on. My experience with working with total bio control in the greenhouse, which is what we do, we don’t spray pesticides, is that it requires a fair amount of skill and understanding of the knowledge of the life cycles of the insects and it really only works if it’s done in a preventative way, rather than in a “I need to repair a problem.” Once you have a problem.

Ronald Valentin 57:17
It’s proactive.

Dave Chapman 57:18
Yeah, it’s got to be proactive. It works, and I think that it could work even much better than it has for us. I’m learning stuff all the time. I’m learning from you all the time. You’re learning stuff all the time. This is a developing field of knowledge, but as a basic way of approaching insects as part of our world, it seems to work remarkably well. Yet, it’s still not embraced very widely. It is pretty widely embraced in the greenhouse industry at this point, but not in the fields.

Ronald Valentin 58:01
I think in the fields, again, I think there’s still more ground to cover, for sure. I think it is fair to say, if I look at the greenhouse vegetable industry in both Canada and the US, I personally can’t think of any grower that is not utilizing biological control. I would even say that on the ornamental side, we have seen such a significant increase in the use of bio control in the last decade. I think you’re absolutely right. I think in agriculture, there’s still a lot to be gained, and I think one of the things that might hold that up to you is the cost of biological control versus doing it the traditional way.

Ronald Valentin 58:59
But also, like you mentioned, knowledge. I think especially in agriculture, looking at biodiversity and utilizing Mother Nature that is, in essence, already there by…like that strawberry grower that I talked about, or strawberry growers in Canada, in the Ontario region, in Quebec, that are planting rows of Alyssum in between their strawberry crop to kind of enhance natural biological control. They’re not necessarily releasing biological control agents, but they utilizing what’s already there and trying to optimize that and stimulate that by, again, creating biodiversity.

Dave Chapman 59:44
A polyculture of some kind.

Ronald Valentin 59:46
Correct. Alyssum is just an example. I think we’re going to see, again, more development with a more diverse… that row of Alyssum that is there right now, in a number of years, that could be Alyssum, Phacelia, Mullein, it could be all kinds of different plant species that we put in that particular space.

Dave Chapman 1:00:13
All right. I think I’ve promised Susan that we would have lunch. So, I think we’ll need to end there. Is there any last thing you’d like to say, Ronald. I always give people a chance for the thing they’ve been aching to say that I didn’t ask.

Ronald Valentin 1:00:36
No. I’d like to thank you. It was a pleasure. I love what I do, and it’s a passion. Passion that I’m very thankful for to my parents and especially my dad, that kind of got me into all of this, because when he started, I was about four years old. Thank you.

Dave Chapman 1:01:09
All right. Well, thank you. Another time, we’ll talk about how they breed all those insects and get them into little bottles. I’m fascinated, but I think it’s time for lunch. Thank you very much, Ronald.

Ronald Valentin 1:01:09
Thank you.