May the force be with you: According to Maizar, the producers “lost their fear” of the chicharrita and “the pers

After the eighth monitoring report on leafhopper populations in agricultural areas of Argentina and Uruguay was released, the president of Maizar, Federico Zerboni, considered that “producers have lost their fear” of this pest and that will encourage the decision to plant late corn in many areas, repeating the planting scheme of last year, when the insect spread throughout the corn region and caused damage estimated at around 12 million tons. “This was the most anticipated report for planting late corn, which is 60% of the total, and it confirms that we have arrived with zero or very low populations. It coincides with what producers are seeing, because corn sales have grown a lot in some areas,” said Zerboni, who from Maizar -as a chain entity- has coordinated the monitoring effort. In effect, a vast network of institutions set up more than 420 traps to measure the advance or retreat of the insect. This work shows a great decrease in the populations of leafhoppers, but there is ...