By John Wood, Regional Manager, CA South Central Valley

In my line of work, I deal with a lot of pests. 

Every day, I see aphids and mites that stress crops hard and stress growers even harder. I even see harmful bacteria and fungi like bacterial canker and Alternaria and that can damage your crops that you work so hard to nurture each growing season.

But, the pest that ranks among the highest on my list of annoyances is the small but destructive ant. During harvest, ants can literally hollow out the nut meat of your crops, leaving you with just an empty shell. For most of you, that’s a real blow to your bottom line.

Even worse than their cousins, the pavement and harvester ants, is the red fire ant. Not only can they do significant damage to your harvest, but they are known to swarm and can leave farmworkers with literally hundreds of stings. That’s damaging to the morale on your farm, too. 

I am always thrilled when we can bring a new product to the marketplace and I can say with even greater certainty to my customers and friends in the industry, “Don’t worry, I see your outbreak, and we can help. Certis USA has your back with our industry-leading portfolio of biopesticides.”

In this case, I am even more excited to officially introduce Firefighter™ Ant Bait to nut crop growers in California and across the nation. A Spinosad product, Firefighter™ was developed with an innovative mode of action that has shown efficacy against both fire and harvester ants with targeted control of colonies and infestations during the pre-harvest of your nut crops.

Firefighter™ features a lightweight, corn grit texture that is highly palatable and easy for ants to carry back into the colonies to finish the job. Years of extensive trial data confirms Firefighter™ kills ants within 24 hours upon ingestion with complete control of ant populations (including the queen) within 3 to 14 days after treatment. Even better, it is proven to control colonies for up to two months.

Use Firefighter™ straight from the container in either a mound or broadcast treatment for a convenient and simple way to quickly deliver fire ant control as you prepare for harvest.

Right now, as we are thinking ahead to the upcoming harvest season, is the perfect time to start putting the pressure on ant colonies in your orchards.

Call me, call your PCA or call your local retailer of Certis USA products, but do it soon so you can start fighting fire with fire in your orchards with Firefighter™ Ant Bait.