Pests Proved Costly in 2021 with Grasshoppers and Fall Armyworms Wiping Out Entire Fields Across U.S.

As drought plagued the West and Plains in 2021, grasshoppers took over many pastures and crops, which demolished grasses and hayfields. 

“It's so widespread, that I’m afraid it's going to be pretty devastating to the industry,” southeast Oregon rancher Bob Skinner told U.S. Farm Report this past summer.

Conditions were so dire, Skinner had to pull his cattle off of federal BLM land a month and a half early, which was a hard decision considering the land is vital for grazing and feed.

“There's no pasture anywhere, period, around here,” said Skinner. “It doesn't matter where you go, or how much you pay for it. You can't find pasture. So, you couple that with the drought and the grasshoppers, the lack of hay, I just  don't see anything good coming out of this thing.”

Grasshoppers Demolished Hay 

A swarm of grasshoppers was a common scene across parts of Oregon, Montana and North Dakota this past year.

AgDay and U.S. Farm Report affiliate KFYR spoke about the problem with Trevor Steeke, a rancher in North Dakota. As Steeke chronicled the grasshopper damage, he said it was the first time he had seen something that extreme in his 25 years of ranching.

“They’re eating it down to nothing,” Steeke told KFYR. “You can see my 300 acres of barley, all you can see is they’ve eaten it to the ground. There’s nothing left.”

In a normal year, Steeke would get 1,500 to 3,000 bales from a 1,000-acre field. This year, he baled 53.

“It’s going to be a tough year, a lot of tough decisions are going to have to be made,” said Steeke.

A First for Fall Armyworms 

In the South, farmers and ranchers battled a different type of pest.

“This fall, the armyworm outbreak is the worst I’ve seen in my career,” said Gus  Lorenz, Extension entomologist for the University of Arkansas system Division of Agriculture.

What are other "Unspoken Truth About Pests"? The Farm Journal team digs into more details here. 

The fall armyworm outbreak in Arkansas was one for the record books, as Arkansas farmers and entomologists worked to battle pests, 2021 was  the “perfect storm” in the worst way.

“It's from one end to the state to the other. All four directions. It's bad everywhere,” said Lorenz in early summer.  “They don't call it fall armyworm for nothing. It usually strikes us late but this year, it started early. I've never seen so many fall armyworms. Anywhere you go there, everybody's got fall armyworms.”

"In soybeans, yield losses from it vary,” said Ben Thrash, Extension entomologist for the University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture system. “A lot of times on late-planted stuff, it can range up to about 30% to 35% yield loss from defoliation on those small soybeans. Now you get later in the growing season in reproductive soybeans, and it can be a lot higher than even that.”

Ohio Farmers Faced with Unusual Battle

In early summer, Lorenz warned that the Midwest could face a similar outbreak, and that’s exactly what some areas saw. The infestation of fall armyworms was something farmers and entomologists in northern Ohio faced for the first time in their careers.

“We've never seen the fall armyworm really much at all before here in the fall,” Curtis Young, an entomologist and Ohio State University agricultural Extension educator for Van Wert County, Ohio, told U.S. Farm Report in early fall. “That's what's throwing everybody kind of for a loop.”

Since the area had never faced an armyworm problem, it was a pest they didn’t know to scout until it was too late.

“This is a 20-acre field, and they took it out in eight to 10 hours,” said Deshler, Ohio, farmer Nick Elchinger.

The Elchingers scouted an alfalfa field on Friday and saw no feeding. By Sunday, they said the entire field was gone.

“The armyworms just started along the edges of the field and then started to work their way in. And then this field, in particular, they started along the backside, and just within a matter of eight to 10 hours, they made their way across this whole field and wiped it out,” he said.

Young says by the time producers knew they had a problem on their hands, the caterpillars were too big for insecticides to effectively control.

“Suddenly, the caterpillars got large enough that they were stripping the foliage off of all kinds of plants in 24 to 48 hours,” said Young.

2021 was full of pest challenges as grasshoppers and armyworms robbed producers of crops and hay.  It proved to be an unusual and costly year for pests. Now, producers are working to be prepared for pest issues in 2022.