Day of the Grasshopper Looms

wondered if anyone had any thoughts about this?
in Him
ellie
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Day of the Grasshopper Looms
by Stephanie Simon
Monday, March 29, 2010
Western Farmers, Ranchers Worry an Expected Infestation Could Ravage Crops, Cattle

Farmers and ranchers across the West are bracing for a grasshopper infestation that could devastate millions of acres of crops and land used for grazing.

Over the coming weeks, federal officials say, grasshoppers will likely hatch in bigger numbers than any year since 1985. Hungry swarms caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage that year when they devoured corn, barley, alfalfa, beets -- even fence posts and the paint off the sides of barns.

(rest of the article here)
http://finance.yahoo.com/real-estate/article/109203/day-of-the-grasshopper-looms

I also read this article. And wondered.

I wondered how this differs from grasshopper plagues in the past? Seems to me Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote about something like this in her books, right? (It has been 50 years since I read these books.)

ginnyrose

Hi

Yes Laura Ingalls Wilder did write about grasshopper plagues. She gave some great descriptions of what it was like to go through. I was just thinking about it happening now,(any significance?) our economy is already taken a hit, unemployment is still high, and this could really hit farmers and ranchers hard. Of course that cost will be passed on to the consumer. I was thinking about how it might affect food supplies and the United States over all. Just some thoughts on my mind?

in Him
ellie

Pestilences concern us all. It promises higher food prices -sometime down the road. The USA has not yet had enough to impact the food supply.

Last summer the farmers in our area were set to harvest record breaking crops until it started raining in August. All year - up to this point - rains were plentiful and came just at the right time. Then it started raining. Someone told me that our precipitation for 2009 was 30 inches above normal with the end result of cotton, soy beans and some corn rotting in the fields. Some were harvested but not with the record breaking yields. But has it effected the availability of food? No. Just drove some prices higher for farmers in another part of the USA. My point: the severity of the weather, the occurrence of pestilences has to be a whole lot greater then what we have seen in order to effect our food supply at the supermarket.

Oh, and then there is China and Mexico that produce food which is imported....

ginnyrose