How Grasshoppers Affect Crops
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Weather Conditions
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While grasshoppers are notorious for swarming and devouring crops at great expense to farmers, not all grasshoppers are pests, and many species do not feed on crop plants or occur in such small numbers that they never reach plague status. Some varieties, however, such as the infamous African locusts or the American grasshoppers, can pose significant dangers to crops if they experience a population explosion.
Grasshoppers do not endanger crops every year. If the weather has been consistent, especially consistently wet or cool, then grasshoppers are not much of a problem. Natural predator rates stay high enough to control them, and they do not get a chance to increase in population and migrate in vast numbers. However, certain weather conditions can help grasshoppers drastically. Generally, a series of hot and dry summers spells trouble in grasshopper-inhabited areas. Grasshoppers lay eggs in the summer, especially around June, and the longer and warmer the summer season is the more eggs they can lay and the more often they can lay them. After several years of this, the grasshopper population reaches dangerous levels and can harm crops.
Grasshopper Growth
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Because of the constant work done to crops and the pesticides used, grasshoppers tend to stay away from farmland during the first stages of their life. They grow quickly as nymphs and soon become adults, capable of leaping large distances and mating. The real trouble begins, however, when they develop wings and become capable of migrating, flying in large groups over distances spanning miles and descending on areas in search of fresh food. The first victims are the plants and weeds along roadways and in uninhabited areas. But grasshoppers prefer to eat young, soft shoots and newly formed leaves, and when their population is large enough they can go through the weeds and start looking for other sources of food.
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Affects
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Not all crops are in danger from grasshoppers, and some can suffer more than others, but those most in danger are the early crops like winter wheat and other young plants that have newly formed shoots and are more susceptible to attack by hungry grasshoppers. By this time it is difficult for farmers to gain control of the pests and save their crops from death or at least severe setback. Grown grasshoppers can be resistant to pesticides and it usually takes drastic action to ward them away. A better method is to use pesticides when the grasshopper population is still mostly in nymph form, but can be seen as a noticeable threat.
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