OCTOBER 2007, AROUND THE STATE
Mighty mite breeder sets up shop in Klamath Falls
KLAMATH FALLS
Spider mites can wreak havoc on crops, wiping out millions of
dollars in agricultural income one tiny bite at a time.
Which is why Skip Maltby, a former aerospace engineer from
Southern California, got into the predator-mite business.
“They’re really green and they’re more
effective than pesticides,” Maltby says of the seven
varieties of predator mites — all with a voracious
appetite for spider mites — that he raises in greenhouses
and sells by the shaker-full to farmers.
Problem was, because the predator mite breeding brothel needed
to be kept at a balmy 90 degrees at all times, Maltby was
getting stuck with sky-high propane bills.
Enter Tracy Liskey. The Klamath Falls-area farmer was already
leasing out his geothermal well-heated greenhouses to other
entrepreneurs (one fine-tuning a biodiesel still, the other
tending pools of tropical fish). A cheap, 90-degree
greenhouse was no sweat at Liskey Farms.
“The Climate Trust had never worked with something
so unique.”
TREY SENN
KLAMATH COUNTY ECONOMIC
DEVELOPMENT ASSOCIATION
|
So when Maltby started poking around for the cash he needed to
start a Klamath operation, he met Trey Senn, executive director
of the Klamath County Economic Development Association, who was
carefully tending his Sustainable Klamath project — a
push to market the region as the place to do green business. He
saw potential in Maltby’s company, Biotactics, and
quickly got him in touch with The Climate Trust.
The Portland-based Climate Trust, a nonprofit battling global
warming, had money to invest in emissions-reduction projects.
They crunched the numbers and figured Biotactics’ use of
geothermal energy would keep 25,000 metric tons of greenhouse
gases out of the atmosphere.
The trust wrote the first check for $130,000, and other
agencies ponied up. Maltby, his move-in costs covered, is
busily breeding.
CHRISTINA WILLIAMS
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