Canadian fields are being overrun by grasshoppers driven by extreme heat

Excessive heat and drought conditions in Canada’s western provinces have driven a big rise in crop-consuming pests that are wreaking havoc on farmers in the prairies. But the situation may only get worse as temperatures are expected to continue to rise higher. 

Grasshoppers have always been a big problem for farmers across the prairie provinces because just like locusts they can be extremely destructive. CBC News noted that even a small infestation of 10 grasshoppers per square meter could eat 60% of all vegetation. 

This is why local provincial and governments spend a lot of time worrying about how to manage their growing grasshopper problem and the 2023 season was no exception—a group of researchers was predicting that June would be a very bad month for farmers. 

Dr. Megan Vankosky is co-editor of the Prairie Pest Monitoring Network’s newsletter as well as a research scientist with Agriculture and Agri-food Canada and she estimated that climate conditions coupled with dry and wet conditions could present problems. 

Photo credit: Twitter @AAFC_Canada

"We've had a huge diversity of weather conditions across the prairies this spring, some areas have been really warm and dry, others warm and wet,” Dr. Vankosky said in the mid-June edition of the Prairie Pest Monitoring Networks newsletter. 

“Each of those areas could have different insect pest pressures as a result,” Vankosky added, encouraging farmers to not only use the resources and maps her organization made available but also to go and scout the conditions in their own fields for insects. 

Dr. Vankosky explained that some researchers in southern Saskatchewan were seeing grasshopper nymphs at a time of year that they weren’t expecting, much earlier than in other seasons which she took to as a worrying sign. 

“In Saskatchewan, Alberta, and I think Manitoba, grasshoppers for sure are potentially a problem across the entirety of the prairies,” Dr. Vankosky said when asked by Strathmore Now’s Glenda-Lee about the potential major pest problems facing the prairie provinces. 

Some areas of Alberta have certainly been hit hard by grasshoppers in recent weeks, and CBC News spoke with several farmers that had suffered major losses—including Robert Brady, who operates a farm in Heisler 160 kilometers outside of Edmonton. 

"The ground was literally moving with them," Brady explained to CBC’s Wallis Snowdon. "It was bare, you could see the soil. They just eat it to nothing."

Half an acre of Brady’s wheat crop was consumed by the grasshoppers that invaded his fields in just a few days according to Snowdon, and the Alberta farmer is still worried his farm could suffer from persistent outbreaks, a situation that could prove disastrous. 

Hot weather and drought conditions have not only led to increased fire activity in Alberta according to Snowdon but they have also stunted the growth of crops and increased the pest problem that has only been controlled by recent rains, though that will be changing.

"Once the drought hits and then you see the grasshoppers, you can't be surprised, they go hand in hand," Brady explained to Snowdon. "They flourish in the drought and the dry.”

"If it's not one thing it's another this year,” the Alberta farmer continued, and he wasn’t wrong. Western Canada has been suffering from extreme weather conditions that have brought on all kinds of unlikely scenarios that usually don’t happen in the same year. 

Dr. Meghan Vankosky also spoke with CBC News about what was happening in Alberta and she said 2023 has been the worst year for grasshoppers she’s seen in decades. 

"With the fire and the flood, we're talking about the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, right?" Dr. Vankosky joked, adding that because crops weren’t growing very well this year the damage that was being done by grasshoppers was far worse than usual. 

"They do tend to prefer cereals, oats, wheat, rye, barley… But in a drought year, they're going to eat really anything they can find," Dr. Vankosky added.