The pesky white butterfly!! When I first started visiting Rancho Lum Ha I thought "Wow how beautiful are all of these abundant butterflies!" And it's true that there is a beautiful variety of butterflies, but this white butterfly is not my favorite anymore. It's actually a pest whose green caterpillars eat up a lot of the plants in the garden.
This butterfly is a problem all over the region. My friends in Guatemala also write to our permaculture WhatsApp group asking about how to deal with this mariposa blanca. Chelo (the agroecologist at the Ranch) told me that in cities it has become a trend to release a bunch of these white butterflies at weddings, which aesthetically must look very beautiful, but if they realized the damage it does to vegetables gardens then they would probably think twice! Chelo and I have picked off tons of the green caterpillars munching on the kale, arugula, etc.. While Chelo is a peaceful, insect-loving person who rescues beetles and other frighteningly big bugs, she relishes in smashing these caterpillars! I told her I was going to collect them in a plastic container because it grosses me out to smash them. She responded, "Ok great, I can smash them!" 😂 There is a deep hate for the mariposa blanca, even from the most peaceful, bug-loving agroecologists like Chelo!
The white butterfly; The leftover stems of the devoured capunchina plants; White butterfly eggs; White butterflies drinking nectar from the elderberry flowers
What can be done about them? Well, a lot of manual removal and smashing. But also, maintaining healthy, nutrient-rich soil will cultivate stronger, more resistant plants. For Chelo and Sebastian, soil quality is the most important thing. This is a bit counter intuitive to what you first think about when you think about pest control. I usually think of sprays, traps, etc. But good soil is the key foundation. As my friend Felix from Guatemala explained, "It's like people... If we aren't eating well and our immune system is low, it's more likely we will get sick or catch a virus. That's why we also need our plants to be strong and healthy. We do that by improving their soil quality."
It's also important to plant "trap plants" around the garden so that pests like the white butterfly have other things to eat. They devoured the beautiful capuchina flowers (garden nasturtiums) at the ends of the garden beds, leaving nothing more than the stubs of the stems. But that's okay because that is what they were there for. Another method is planting a diversity of interspersed plants rather than one crop. This prevents a pest from feasting on one crop.
This white butterfly pest is what discouraged one young producer who works at Rancho Lum Ha from trying to produce with agroecolgical methods. He lost his whole broccoli crop because of the mariposa blanca! This butterfly especially loves vegetables like kale, broccoli, etc. Chelo explained that he could have managed this pest better by diversifying, building up the soil quality more, having more trap plants, etc. You can imagine why it might seem easier for a producer to just spray on some chemical herbicide, especially if their neighbors are all using herbicides. The process transitioning to agroecological methods requires time, assistance, and accompaniment. There is a lot of knowledge, experience and practice that go into it, and it's a lot to adapt to.
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