Drought Halts Grasshopper Infestation Spray Committees Urged For Farmers

Wed., Aug. 10, 1994

Eric Sorensen Staff writer

Farmers overrun by grasshoppers will have to wait until spring to receive government help killing the bugs, but the local head of the federal pest program said many appear to be dying on their own.

“These grasshoppers right now are suffering from the drought,” David Keim of the federal Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service told several dozen farmers Tuesday.

Without late summer rains, the insects’ numbers have dropped and females are not producing the eggs that could lead to a renewed infestation next year, Keim said. However, he encouraged farmers to organize county grasshopper control committees now to receive government help to spray next spring.

“To engage in a program like this takes a community will,” he said.

Starting in late May, a wave of grasshoppers across the rangelands of southeastern Washington reminded farmers and extension agents of outbreaks like that of 1973, when APHIS sprayed more than a million acres in the state.

“The grasshoppers didn’t quite make it into the locust category, but in parts of Garfield County they came pretty close to it,” said Dave Bragg, an entomologist and the county’s extension agent.

The bugs defoliated trees, groomed pastures to billiard-table smoothness and greased themselves beneath tires and against rushing automobiles. APHIS field tests showed them to be well above the numbers at which it would pay to spray, but those numbers dropped substantially by the end of July, Keim said.

Farmers now are worried the bugs, hungry for a food source, will devour germinating wheat as it is planted in the coming weeks. Bob Bafus, an Endicott farmer, said he may put off his planting time.

“I don’t really want to spray or spend the money on spraying,” he said after Tuesday’s meeting. “It may not do any good.”

Meanwhile, farmers can organize to take part in an APHIS program that reimburses them for part of the cost to spray at least 10,000 contiguous acres of rangeland, onefifth of which can be cropland. The federal government will pay one-third the cost of the spraying, while farmers through their county committees will need to put together at least one-third. If the state can’t help, farmers could end up paying two-thirds of the cost.

The state Department of Agriculture so far has been unwilling to provide any funding because of budget cutbacks, Keim said.

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