The New World screwworm’s return to the U.S. highlights a changing pest threat landscape, which is not only impacting ranchers and farmers but also the global food system. One of the companies at the forefront of responding to the pest is Virginia-based Flyttr, which is using integrated biosecurity strategies to provide a blueprint on how to address these challenges now and in the future.
Initially launched as Oxitec in 2002, Flyttr business offers pest surveillance through sensors and autonomous sentry systems, monitoring software with AI capabilities, and bio-based crop protection products, and helps launch new tech onto the market through contract work and partner programs, Grey Franson, CEO of Flyttr, told AgNavigator.
These different business lines come together to form a holistic approach to managing biosecurity threats — from detection to treatment — Franson added.
“We will be the Palantir of the pest management space. If we are sensing and detecting, we now need to help customers make decisions. It’s one thing to know where the [pest] is. It’s another thing to actually have tools that say, ‘Okay, let’s bring in X, Y, and Z capabilities,’” Franson elaborated.
Flyttr takes the flight to the New World screwworm
Flyttr’s immediate challenge is helping the U.S. government counter the New World screwworm (NWS), through a contract to build a San Antonio, Texas, innovation hub as part of the FastFly initiative.
Texas has been the epicenter of the U.S. NWS outbreak, with two active cases of the pest detected as of USDA reporting from Sept. 9. While NWS activity slows down in the winter, the insect will re-emerge in the spring and with it more cases, Franson explained.
The FastFly initiative is designed to bolster American-made sterile flies and provide a modular way to develop new systems to address pest threats that pose national biosecurity threats. The USDA has made several investments over the last year in sterile fly production, which was a crucial component of eradicating the pest in the past.
While NWS is the pest concern of the moment, Flyttr wants its biosecurity platform to be a template for future pest threats, Franson said. A major part of that biosecurity approach is boosting surveillance, which will allow for better tracking of pests and where they are heading, and then following it up with mitigation efforts, he added.
“The punchline here is: We’re here to help [with] screwworm, but actually, how we do this thing — how we rapidly build out this facility, rapidly build out screwworm production — ideally sets a template for how the U.S. government sees a problem and how quickly it can respond to that problem,” Franson said.
He added, “Screwworm is devastating, but I can give you five additional pest threats that are either here or on the way that are far greater of a burden in economic terms.”
What is the next NWS?
NWS is a major concern among the beef supply chain, but other pests, like the boll weevil in cotton, are major disruptors of agricultural production, Franson said. This comes as “traditional control measures are failing” to suppress the boll weevil and other major pest threats, he added.
“We have a changing pest landscape. Pests pose arguably the largest threat to agricultural security globally. Pests destroy potentially more than 20% of all food produced around the planet, and their patterns are changing. Intensive agriculture is putting pressure on existing or traditional tools. So, chemical pesticides, for example, are losing effectiveness at a very rapid rate,” Franson emphasized.
