Grasshoppers, which devour stems and flowers, love domestic crops like wheat but they also enjoy native grasses and weeds. (Getty Images)
The future of grasshopper and cricket control in Oregon is in the air after a district judge ruled against the overuse of pesticides by a federal agency.
Earlier this month, U.S. District Judge Marco Hernandez in U.S. District Court in Portland ruled that the U.S. Department of Agriculture had failed to consider controlling the pests with methods other than pesticides as required by law. The USDA sprays pesticides on millions of acres in the West every year – including wide swaths of Oregon – to constrict the spread of insects, which can decimate crops and rangeland used by cattle.
Farmers have long struggled with the pests, with infestations rising in recent years. Southern and eastern Oregon have dealt with some of the worst plagues of grasshoppers in decades that have destroyed millions of acres of farmland and killed crops that fuels their livelihoods.
But the two environmental groups that in May 2022 brought the suit – Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation and the Center for Biological Diversity – say pesticides do harm in the long run.
“Widespread pesticide use is not a fix for anything, but rather one of the drivers of the ongoing decline of insect abundance, diversity, and biomass – a decline that threatens to disrupt ecosystems,” their complaint said. “Many pollinator populations – including several species of bumble bee and the monarch butterfly – are declining at an alarming rate, threatening the long-term viability of the very food systems that pesticides are supposed to benefit.”
The ruling, which orders the USDA to take a more holistic approach to combating pests, means the agency and Oregon farmers and ranchers who’ve depended on pesticides will have to update their pest control methods and use another strategy. That could affect their livelihoods if the new methods are not as efficient or wide-reaching.
What strategy the USDA will use is unclear.
The USDA did not respond to questions from the Capital Chronicle about the impact of the decision. The Oregon Department of Agriculture also did not respond. The agency is in charge of helping farmers cope with infestations.
In court documents, the USDA denied allegations that the environmentalist groups levied: that their spraying program is opaque, harms endangered species and hurts both the economy and the environment, among others.
The environmentalists who brought the case say it is a win for the environment. Sharon Selvaggio, the Xerces pesticide program specialist, said the chemicals the USDA sprays cause wide ecological damage, harming a broad array of insects.
“If it wasn’t for insects,” she said, “we wouldn’t have birds, we wouldn’t have reptiles like lizards and snakes; we wouldn’t have mammals.”
Bees are especially affected, Selvaggio said. And because bees are already under threat from drought, habitat destruction, pollution and global warming, she said, pesticide use hurts them even more.
Bees are crucial pollinators and help uphold the ecosystems in the West. Spraying also hurts butterflies, moths and numerous other insects, she said.
As for the impacts on farmers, Selvaggio said that more holistic techniques such as rotational grazing actually help reduce infestations more than pesticide use. Pesticides, she said, can cause huge infestations — as seen in recent years.
Strategies to combat infestations will vary by location, she said, but could include anything from changing when farmers plant crops to rotational grazing, which reduces the density of grasshoppers.
Andrew Missel, an attorney with environmental law firm Advocates for the West, said the ruling’s specifics will be litigated in the coming months.
Missel said he hopes the ruling will increase transparency in the USDA. That means more room for public comment, he said, and more time for organizations to respond.
“They need to give the public a meaningful opportunity to understand what’s going on,” he said.
One of the most important impacts of the case, Missel said, will be forcing the USDA to “take a step back.”
“They’ll have to consider a true integrated pest management approach,” he said.
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