Sugar farmers learn to drub the grubs.

Asia Africa Intelligence Wire
 | July 31, 2003 | Copyright
(From Philippine Daily Inquirer)
Byline: Mei Magsino, Tuy, Batangas
RESIDENTS of Tuy town in Batangas are fighting back -actually, eating back- to get rid of the "salagubang" (June or toy beetles) that have been wreaking havoc on their sugar cane farms.
Although this way of exterminating the pests proved unfriendly to the discriminating palate of the Batangueno, the town successfully held the first-ever "Salagubang Peste-bal" (June Beetle Festival) on July 24. Farmers from Tuy, Calaca, Balayan, Nasugbu and Calatagan towns joined the festival and feasted on live beetles.
"This is what we call a celebration of the revenge of the sugar cane farmers whose incomes have been depleted by the salagubang infestation," Tuy Mayor Boy Calingasan said.
Since 1940, the town has been losing millions of pesos from the infestation, he added.
Losses
Mention the word salagubang and sugar cane farmers would say Tuy. For many decades, the town holds the record of heaviest salagubang infestation in the province.
The Philippine Business for Social Progress (PBSP), a nongovernment organization helping farmers in western Batangas, revealed in a study of the sugarcane industry in the province that Tuy had been losing P40 million to P70 million every cropping year due to beetle infestation.
Dr. Greg Quimio of the National Crop Protection Center of the University of the Philippines in Los Banos, said in a lecture held during the festival that the most destructive stage in the growth of the beetle was its larva period.
"The salagubang larva, or what we call white grub, and what the farmers here call ulalo, lives most of its lifetime in the soil. In its final growth stage, it reaches three to four inches in length, and is equipped with well-developed mandibles that enables it to chew on the roots of the sugar cane," Quimio said.
Grubs
Quimio said the grub could chew even the hardest roots of the sugar cane.
At six to eight months, the larva's root-feeding rampage is considered the most destructive. "In severe infestation, not only the roots but also the base nodes of the sugar cane are eaten by the grubs," Quimio added.
"In those cases, the growth of the plants becomes stunted. Some sugar cane plants lose anchorage and just topple (down). That causes the plant to dry up and die prematurely. In Tuy, we've got severe cases of that every cropping year."
Another study conducted by Dow Agro Sciences, an insecticide company, revealed that under heavy attack, the yield of a six-month-old crop could drop to 60 percent or about 30 tons of sugar cane per hectare, reducing farmers' income to 40 percent.
Adding the cost of efforts to control the grubs, earnings plummet farther to less than 30 percent.
Life cycle
At the end of July, a female beetle lays thousands of eggs on the ground that hatch into white grubs.
During its larva stage from August to December, the white grub feeds on the roots of the sugar cane. By January and February, they bore deeper into the soil by about a meter and form an earthen shell. By March or April, just as the planting season starts, they undergo the pupation stage.
By May or June, when the rainy season starts and the newly planted sugar cane begins to grow, the insect squirms out of its earthen shell and becomes a beetle.
As the beetles are considered a popular delicacy in several provinces in Northern and Central Luzon, the local agriculture office, sugar cane farmers and the PBSP started their festival of revenge.
Gilbert Sebastian, PBSP program officer, said "we were thinking that if we could start that (eating the June beetle) in Batangas, it could be the answer to totally eradicating the pests. Plus, the salagubang could provide farmers with an alternative source of income, viand or pulutan," he added.
The Salagubang Peste-bal included cooking demonstration of Tarlac's famous salagubang recipes like sinangag na salagubang fried beetles, adobong salagubang, salagubang sauteed with tomatoes, chili con salagubang and potato-salagubang omelette.
Cooks Robert Lucas and Johnny Castillo, who hail from Camiling, Tarlac, said their province has actually nine famous salagubang recipes, but they demonstrated only five of them.
"We even have lumpiang (rolled) salagubang, tostadong (toasted) salagubang, paksiw na salagubang, sinigang na salagubang, ginataang (cooked with coconut cream) salagubang and salagubang barbecue," Castillo said. "I have been eating salagubang since I was a little boy and I think that's the reason I'm healthy. Salagubang is rich in protein."
Lucas said that since the people in his village in Camiling started eating the insect, their sugar cane farms became more productive.
Fear factor
The festival also included a pageant for the best salagubang mascot, salagubang wrestling tournament and salagubang flying contest.
Representatives of various farmers' groups and cooperatives joined the contests.
The event also challenged the Batangueno's stomach as part of the program involved the salagubang eating contest.
The first part of the "Fear Factor" challenge involved transferring as many salagubang as the participant's mouth can carry from a basin into an empty container.
Nineteen men and two women joined the contest of eating 20 cooked salagubang and 10 live ones.
For the prize of P5,000, seven elimination round contestants joined. But the contest proved to be too unfriendly for the stomach of some of the contestants as some of them vomited right in the middle of the contest.
The taste
Even Tuy's mayor had a taste of the cooked salagubang.
Trying to evade the people's clamor to see him eat the insect, Calingasan first offered the delicacy to the town hall's department heads.
When a TV crew, complete with cameras focused on him, he, too, ate the salagubang.
Asked about the taste, Calingasan said: "It tastes sour and delicious, and crunchy. Don't worry, it's clean."