Rep. Julio A. Ledesma IV (Neg. occ., 1st District) is calling for a massive, coordinated scaling of biological control measures to defend the country’s embattled sugar industry against the devastating impacts of the Red Stripped Soft-Scale Insects (RSSI).
Ledesma, who chairs the House Committee on Science and Technology, on Tuesday, June 30, issued a rallying cry to mobilize what he terms “Nature’s Army”—a multi-pronged biological warfare strategy utilizing native predators, parasites, and fungi to suppress the pest populations that are currently threatening planters’ livelihoods.
“The Filipino sugar planter is under siege. RSSI has weakened his crop, increased his costs, and threatened his livelihood. But let us not count him out,” Ledesma said.
“The challenge before us is not discovery. It is multiplication,” Ledesma stated, emphasizing that the scientific solutions already exist.
“The question is no longer ‘What works?’ The question is ‘How do we scale it?'”, he said.
FOUR NATURAL ALLIES
He said the biological control strategy relies on four distinct natural organisms, each deployed with a specific tactical role to suppress RSSI populations:
- Lady Beetles (Nature’s Hunters): Tasked with continuously consuming RSSI populations. The plan calls for decentralized breeding colonies in regional private insectaries managed by sugar mills, cooperatives, and universities to ensure year-round availability for release into newly infested fields.
- Green Lacewings (Nature’s First Responders): Utilized specifically to destroy RSSI during its mobile “crawler” stage. These will be mass-reared in weekly production cycles and distributed on strict schedules coordinated through planter associations.
- Parasitic Wasps (Nature’s Silent Guardians): Targeted for long-term suppression. Specialized breeding programs will execute repeated releases until self-sustaining, wild populations are successfully established.
- Beneficial Fungi (Nature’s Invisible Reinforcements): Microscopic agents that naturally infect and kill the pest. These will be manufactured locally under national quality standards by accredited Philippine suppliers and integrated into broader pest management programs.
The Philippine sugar industry already possesses the institutions needed to build Nature’s Army, Ledesma said, citing sugar mills, planters’ associations, federations and cooperatives.
These institutions require no reinvention. They require a common mission: to breed, distribute, monitor, and continually improve Nature’s Army, he said.
Ledesma also said the National Research Council of the Philippines and the nation’s scientific institutions should focus on one mission: increase the effectiveness of Nature’s Army.
Every research should focus on five operational questions: how to breed these biological allies more abundantly, accelerate their production cycles, lower implementation costs, improve field survival rates, and scale operations nationwide, he said.
“Research ends not when a paper is published. Research ends when another Filipino sugar planter is protected,” he said.
“The Filipino sugar planter is no longer alone. Nature has already provided the allies. Science must strengthen them. Industry must multiply them. Government must enable them,” he said.
“The Filipino sugar planters is his own field commander. If we can all give it a go, we’re all its heroes. Everyone has their tasks, what matters most is that we act now,” he added.
And together “we can restore the balance”, Ledesma said.*
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