Grasshoppers

GRASSHOPPERS

GRASSHOPPERS regularly destroyed crops from the start of American agriculture to the early 1950s. These insects fall roughly into migratory and nonmigratory groups. Although migratory grasshoppers (locusts) generally did the most damage, every species caused problems in some part of America. Locusts usually attacked sparsely settled regions, while nonmigratory species typically struck more settled regions. Especially serious attacks occurred in New England in 1743, 1749, 1754, and 1756 and recurred into the nineteenth century, especially in Vermont and Maine. California missions suffered heavily several times in the 1820s, as did farms in Missouri and Minnesota. Grasshoppers appeared in the Great Basin and on the Great Plains in 1855 and at odd intervals thereafter. The great grasshopper plagues of the Plains occurred in 1874–1876. The need for research to prevent attacks factored significantly into the 1863 creation of the Division of Entomology (renamed the Bureau of Entomology in 1904) in the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The hopperdozer, a device for catching and killing insects, made its first recorded appearance in 1878, but it may have been used as early as 1858. It consisted of a shallow pan on skids with a large screen behind the pan, which farmers pulled across fields. Grasshoppers jumped up, hit the screen, and fell into a pan filled with kerosene or poison. Farmers used hopperdozers well into the twentieth century. Control by bran and molasses mixed with arsenic remained the chief means of effective control until the discovery of the hydrocarbon insecticides, such as chlordane, in the mid-1940s.

In the twentieth century the worst grasshopper attacks occurred in 1931, 1934, 1936, and 1939. The worst of these was the 1936 invasion, which destroyed crops and forage on a grand scale throughout the Midwest and South and especially on the Great Plains. The menace of grasshoppers declined during World War II, and thereafter the use of new insecticides has kept grasshoppers in check.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Schlebecker, J. T. "Grasshoppers in American Agricultural History." Agricultural History 27 (1953): 85–93.

Sorensen, W. Conner. Brethren of the Net: American Entomology, 1840–1880. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1995.

John T. Schlebecker / c. w.

See also Agriculture, Department of ; Insecticides and Herbicides .