A year after a grasshopper infestation that some Baker County farmers and ranchers said was the worst here in decades, the Oregon Department of Agriculture is giving the county $100,000 to help private property owners deal with the crop-munching insects.

The state agency filed emergency rules establishing the grant program on April 24.

Four other counties will also get $100,000 each — Harney, Malheur, Klamath and Lake.

The emergency rule also allocated $425,000 that could be distributed among any of Oregon’s 36 counties, potentially including but not limited to the five that received $100,000, that have significant infestations of either grasshoppers or Mormon crickets this year.

Individual counties will decide how to allocate the grant money, said Sunny Summers, senior policy advisor for the agriculture department.

So long as counties disburse the money “equitably,” state officials recognize that local residents will know better how to use the dollars to deal with grasshoppers and reduce their economic effect, Summers said.

The state didn’t offer financial aid to farmers and ranchers dealing with infestations last year, and with the potential for a repeat in 2024, officials decided to award grants this spring, said Casey Prentiss, Eastern Oregon program director for the agriculture department.

Shane Alderson, chairman of the Baker County Board of Commissioners, said on Thursday, May 2 that he’s “excited” that the county can help private landowners deal with the insects that can cause major damage to hay and other crops.

County commissioner Christina Witham said the county will have applications available on the county website, www.bakercounty.org, soon. The county will reimburse landowners for up to 75% of the cost of insecticide and application, with payments to be made in November, Witham said.

Will Price, Oregon State University extension agent in Baker City, and Whitney Rohner, manager of the Baker County Soil and Water Conservation Districts, are coordinating the application program, Witham said.

Because the $100,000 could be used relatively quickly, Witham said she hopes Baker County will also be able to use some of the additional $425,000.

The 2023 infestation

Farmers and ranchers in Baker and southern Union counties said last summer that hopper numbers were higher than they had seen in several decades.

“They are horrid — the worst I’ve seen,” John Wirth, a cattle rancher in the Medical Springs area, near the border of Baker and Union counties northeast of Baker City, said in July 2023.

The infestation led farmers and state officials to fear another, potentially more severe, outbreak in 2024 as the eggs laid by grasshoppers the previous year hatch.

Although adult grasshoppers can’t survive cold weather, their eggs are considerably more hardy, said Todd Adams, who works in the insect pest prevention and management department in the Oregon Department of Agriculture. The eggs hatch in spring, and depending on weather, infestations can become worse in subsequent years, Adams said.

“There’s a huge amount of concern for what we are going to see next year,” Rohner said in 2023. “Unless conditions are perfect in the spring for a die-off, it could be just as big a problem as in 2023.”

Adams said there is no effective way to deal with grasshopper eggs. Treatment with pesticides is most effective if it’s done as soon as possible after the hoppers hatch, before they mature into adults that can fly.

Once they can fly, Adams noted, the hoppers can flee areas sprayed with pesticides.

Cool, wet weather during spring can reduce the number of eggs that hatch, he said.

Adams said on Tuesday morning, April 30, that employees from the agriculture department have found small numbers of newly hatched hoppers — known as nymphs — in the Keating Valley area, mainly on south-facing slopes where the soil warms earlier in the spring.

The unseasonably cold weather this week — the temperature dipped to 24 degrees early Tuesday at the Baker City Airport — combined with occasional rain could help pare the grasshopper population, Adams said.

The insects are vulnerable to those conditions for a few days after they hatch, as moisture can lead to the formation of a fungus that kills the insects, he said.

Prentiss said the largest number of grasshoppers found so far this year are in Malheur County, which also has an infestation of Mormon crickets.

State inspectors have also found smaller numbers of hoppers in Harney, Klamath and Baker counties.

Recent infestations

According to the Oregon Department of Agriculture, the 2020 infestation was the worst in the state since the 1980s and early 1990s.

Until 2021.

That summer, surveys of several thousand sites across Eastern Oregon showed grasshopper concentrations exceeded the “economic density” level of eight hoppers per square yard on 66% of the surveyed sites.

That was up from 60% in 2020 and a significant increase from 26% in 2019.

When grasshoppers or Mormon crickets — actually a type of katydid — exceed the economic density, the insects can reduce the value of crops or grazing land, according to the agriculture department.

In 2021 the average, at sites that exceeded the economic density, was 65 hoppers per square yard.

State officials estimated that 10.1 million acres were infested across 18 counties, including Baker, Grant, Union, Wallowa, Umatilla and Morrow. The largest infestations were in Harney and Malheur counties.

The situation improved somewhat in 2022, with an estimated 5.3 million acres infested, including parts of the six counties listed above. The percentage of surveyed sites with economic densities of hoppers dropped to 42%.

Adams said cool, wet weather during the spring of 2022 in Northeast Oregon helped limit the infestation that year. The state’s southeast corner didn’t benefit from the weather, however.

For 2023, an estimated 7.7 million acres were infested, with grasshopper populations exceeding the economic damage threshold on almost 2.3 million acres — 29%.

On infested acres, however, the average grasshopper concentration was 63 per square yard, only slightly below the 2021 average of 65.