Moth and Wasp, Soil and Ocean: Remembering Chinese Scientist Pu Zhelong’s Work for Sustainable Farming

In the 1940s, Chinese farmers were having problems with bugs eating their crops. They tried pesticides, but these chemicals made them sick, and the next year, there would be even more bugs. One year, a scientist, Pu Zhelong, came to the village to help the farmers. He taught them that wasps would help their crops. Wasps would lay their larvae in the eggs of the pests, and the wasp larvae would eat the pests from inside the eggs, hatch, and lay more larvae. The farmers were not sure about this, but Pu proved to them that this was a good way to get rid of the pests that ate their crops.

I really liked Moth and Wasp, Soil and Ocean: Remembering Chinese Scientist Pu Zhelong’s Work for Sustainable Farming. I thought it did a really good job explaining how the wasps would eat the other insects before they hatched, but I had some trouble understanding some of the diagrams. I think it is neat to learn about a real person in history who I had never heard about before. The illustrations show the Chinese countryside as a very beautiful place, and I liked seeing the insects. I would recommend this book to people who want to learn about the history of sustainable farming.