The stakes couldn't be higher for Mike Fiore, a 78-year-old immigrant from Italy who has owned vineyards in Pylesville, Maryland, since 1975. Recently, Fiore's vineyards have fallen prey to the invasive spotted lanternfly.
"If we don't destroy them, [they'll] destroy us," Fiore told CNBC. "This is the most destructive insect."
Fiore's family has been in the wine business for 300 years and Fiore Winery has already lost around 50% of its production this year because of the lanternflies.
"We've never seen anything like this," Fiore said.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the vampiric lanternfly feeds on a wide variety of ornamental and fruit trees, including grapevines.
A native of Asia, the spotted lanternfly was first identified in Pennsylvania in 2014 and has since spread to Connecticut, Delaware, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Virginia and West Virginia.
While it's unknown exactly how many of the invasive insects are feasting on crops across the country, Julie Urban, an associate research professor of entomology at Penn State, told CNBC it's possibly billions.
The destructive lanternflies have spread across the United States by hitchhiking, according to researchers — clinging to the wheel wells of cars and catching a ride on planes and trains, laying their eggs as they go.
Larry Shrawder said his vineyard in Kempton, Pennsylvania, was among the first to experience the insects' devastation.
"They cover the entire trunk, and you get to the point where you can't even see the trunk anymore," the owner of Stony Run Winery told CNBC. "It's just side by side lanternflies all sucking the juice out of your plant.
"It eliminates the plant's ability to ripen fruit and to store carbohydrates over winter, and most of the death occurs the following year when the plant doesn't wake up in the spring," he added.
Experts say spotted lanternflies feed on the vines themselves, rather than the grapes.
Shrawder told CNBC it's been four years since the lanternflies began decimating his vineyard.
"For quite a while, we thought we were just going to be out of business," he said. "The 15% of the vineyard we lost translates to about 30,000 bottles per year and about $525,000 worth of product a year that was taken out by the flies."
Shrawder first wrapped his vines in white nets in an effort to keep the insects from getting to them and then resorted to spraying insecticide on the trees surrounding the vineyard when the nets didn't work.
"It's not successful completely, but we certainly reduce the insect bloat in the vineyard that way," he said.
Of great concern is that the spotted lanternfly will invade the California and New York vineyards, which are the largest in the country.
"It's not a matter of if; it's a matter of when," Urban told CNBC.
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