BAKER CITY, Ore. — Mike Williams has been battling grasshoppers for more than a month and he’s worried the bugs are winning.

“They’re bad,” Williams, a Baker Valley farmer, said on July 21. “I haven’t seen them this bad in 53 years. There are millions.”

Williams is not alone in his assessment of the scourge of crop-devouring insects, which are affecting several parts of Baker and southern Union counties.

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

Wirth said he has considered an infestation in the early 1980s as the most severe in his experience, but he thinks this summer’s outbreak might be worse.

The hoppers have reduced the yield from some of Wirth’s grass hay fields, although he doesn’t have a precise estimate of the loss.

“They’ll just eat it up as it grows,” he said.

He started seeing young bugs in early June, when they were too small to do much damage to his alfalfa fields.

But once the hoppers grew and were capable of flying, they started stripping the leaves off the alfalfa, leaving only the stems in places, and slashing the value of the hay, Wirth said.

In the Keating Valley, about 15 miles east of Baker City, rancher Patti Pickard said hoppers are so thick that she has to wear safety goggles while riding a four-wheeler.

“I haven’t seen them like this in years,” Pickard said on Friday. “They’re in all the fields, irrigated or dry.”

Craig Ward, whose family raises wheat, peppermint, potatoes and corn in Baker Valley, said the hoppers showed up “all of the sudden” in early June.

Ward said he was surprised in part because the cool, wet weather earlier in the spring typically limits the spread of grasshoppers.

The infestation was scattered, he said, with high numbers in some fields — a couple hundred per square yard in places — but few hoppers in others.

Ward said he and several other property owners decided to spray pesticide by air to try to control the bugs before they grew and started gobbling crops. The spraying took place a couple miles north of Baker City, on grass hay fields near Osborn Road, he said.

The treatment seems to have been effective, Ward said, as he has been seeing fewer hoppers since.

He said he continues to monitor his family’s crop fields to make sure the insects don’t move in.

Bert Siddoway, a rancher in the Durkee Valley, said he’s seen more grasshoppers than usual in that area, about 25 miles southeast of Baker City, as well as on his land in Baker Valley.

Siddoway said the numbers in the Durkee area this year are similar to what he saw in 2022. He said the densities are high enough to lower hay yields.

Elsewhere in southern Baker County, Mark Bennett, who has a cattle ranch near Unity, said he hasn’t seen large numbers of hoppers this summer.

But Suzan Ellis Jones, a rancher near Clarks Creek, east of Bridgeport, said populations are higher than usual.

Spraying and surveying

Wirth said he has sprayed pesticide on about 300 acres, and he’d like to treat another 1,000.

But at a cost of $20 per acre, he’s not sure that will be possible.

Williams said aerial spraying, the technique used last month in Baker Valley, costs $25 per acre, including the pesticide.

According to a report from the Oregon Department of Agriculture, the density of grasshoppers has been increasing the past two years in parts of Baker and Union counties.

A 2021 survey of more than 20 sites, including Baker Valley, Medical Springs, Keating and North Powder, showed high densities — defined as more than 50 hoppers per square yard — at 17 locations.

According to the agriculture department, densities of 8 bugs or more per square yard is considered to have an economic effect.

The 2021 survey showed the largest number of acres with an economic effect since the 1980s and early 1990s, according to the agency. Harney County had the most acres infested, at 2.4 million acres, followed by Malheur County with 1.4 million acres.

Baker County’s total was 429,000 acres, and Union County’s was 394,00.

Grasshopper outbreaks often happen during or after droughts, said Todd Adams, who works in the insect pest prevention and management department in the agriculture department.

He said the current infestation, and the outbreaks in the previous two years, were largely driven by drought.

“They have been pretty bad,” Adams said.

There are no state or federal programs that help private landowners spray for grasshoppers, he said.

“I haven’t seen them this bad in 53 years. There are millions.”

— Mike Williams, Baker Valley farmer, talking about a grasshopper infestation