08/12/08 Attack of the Grasshoppers

Attack of the Grasshoppers. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture. It almost sounds like something out of a biblical passage or a really bad b-movie where millions of grasshoppers swoop down out of the sky and devour everything in site. Well there are some farmers in Eastern Oregon that might agree with part of that. Helmuth Rogg supervises the Insect Pest Prevention and Management Program for the Oregon Department of Agriculture. ROGG: Grasshoppers are cyclic pests so they do come in waves sort of. They do come and go. They take a few years to build up their populations but the always stay in the background. Basically for an untrained eye, you won't see them but they are there. And then when we notice them they are in an outbreak situation. Right now the grasshoppers are making themselves know in Eastern Oregon and researchers are working hard to manage the populations. Rogg says they are really like natures lawnmowers. ROGG: They are actually eating more biomass than anything else out there by far more than the cattle. But having said that, that's where we run into the conflict between our cattle production and grasshoppers because they eat the same resources. Obviously that can create a lack of feed for grazing cattle and of course as the insects move into other crops other commodities are affected. Rogg says the populations of grasshoppers will continue their cyclical upswing. ROGG: At the end of last year we made a map to predict what's going to happen this year and started to have conferences, meetings to warn growers and ranchers in the area of the potential outbreak for 2008. With the long winter, spring never really materialized, we thought we'd dodged a bullet but we didn't know it was actually a cannonball flying at us. They have been utilizing an insect growth inhibitor to try and slow the onslaught. ROGG: And about 10-thousand acres were sprayed privately against grasshoppers. We usually prefer to get out there early to catch these grasshoppers early when they're immature which prevents the young grasshoppers from hatching and molting into the next stage. Once the grasshoppers reach maturity they are immune to the inhibitor and other pesticides must then be used. Tomorrow, more on the growing grasshopper problem. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.