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A potato farmer must battle the potato bug, a beetle that is detrimental
to the health of the potato plant because it eats the leaves,
an important source of nutrients. Before the use of pesticides,
farmers picked the bugs off the leaves by hand, a time-consuming process.
In the 1890s, Allan Hunter, a Prince Edward Island inventor,
devised a machine to replace this method which he produced and sold to local farmers.
Hunter’s Bug Picker was a device that the farmer rolled between the rows of potato plants.
The paddles on either side of the machine whacked the leaves,
hitting the bugs off the leaves and into a tray of kerosene below,
thus killing the bugs. This Bug Picker, one of a few still in existence,
signifies the important contribution of Prince Edward Island
to the potato industry and the innovativeness of Canadians in the agriculture industry.