In the UK, it's June, and that means the milling wheat crops are facing the biggest threat of the arable year. It comes from the Orange Wheat Blossom Midge. It lays its eggs in the ears of wheat on a still, calm evening, and the emerging larvae wreck the bread-making quality of the finished crop. Farmers all over the nation are tiptoeing through their crops, counting the little orange bugs to see if they have passed the threshold for treatment.
If there are more than a certain number, out comes the cropsprayer, and a lethal insecticide is applied. The poor, innocent midges are killed.
How fortunate for the veggies that sweet little OWBM don't feature on their care radar.
Here's the Farmers Weekly alert.
