Start thinking like a corn rootworm, and you’ll have a better shot at keeping the yield-robbing pest from taking over your cornfields. Those are some words of advice from Ann Marie Journey, an independent soil, wetland and stream health evaluator and founder of EntoVentures LLC.

“When you approach the rootworm as just a problem that has to be solved, you’re not taking into account the animal’s biology,” Journey says. “You’re hitting it just at certain points or with certain methods or controls, and you’re not allowing yourself in effect to have a conversation to gain insight back from the rootworms about what it is that makes them successful in any given place. The more you know about what is making them successful, the more you might be able to make their life more complicated.”

Journey, who conducted extensive research on corn rootworm, insecticides and herbicide-tolerant and rootworm-resistant corn at the Univ. of Minnesota, shared critical information about the “billion-dollar bug” at the 2024 National Strip-Tillage Conference, along with 5 practices that could make your farm more rootworm-resilient.

Resilience Practice #1: Minimize Disturbance

Healthy soils with plenty of life are a rootworm’s worst nightmare because they’re easy targets to be eaten by viruses, bacteria, protists (algae, flagellates, amoebae), fungi, nematodes, worms, arthropods (centipedes, millipedes, mites, spiders, springtails, insects) and vertebrates.

“In healthy soil, you might have 5-20,000 pounds of these organisms per acre in the top 6 inches,” Journey says. “There should be a lot of these natural enemies to…