PART II. PRESERVATIONCHAPTER XXIIOUR ANNUAL LOSSES BY INSECTS
PART II. PRESERVATION
CHAPTER XXII
OUR ANNUAL LOSSES BY INSECTS
"You take my life when you do take the means whereby I live."
"In no country in the world," says Mr. C.L. Marlatt, of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, "do insects impose a heavier tax on farm products than in the United States." These attacks are based upon an enormous and varied annual output of cereals and fruits, and a great variety and number of trees. For every vegetable-eating insect, native and foreign, we seem to have crops, trees and plant food galore; and their ravages rob the market-basket and the dinner-pail. In 1912 there were riots in the streets of New York over the high cost of food.
In 1903, this state of fact was made the subject of a special inquiry by the Department of Agriculture, and in the "Yearbook" for 1904, the reader will find, on page 461, an article entitled, "The Annual Loss Occasioned by Destructive Insects in the United States." The article is not of the sensational type, it was not written in an alarmist spirit, but from beginning to end it is a calm, cold-blooded analysis of existing facts, and the conclusions that fairly may be drawn from them. The opinions of several experts have been considered and quoted, and often their independent figures are stated.
With the disappearance of our birds generally, and especially the slaughter of song and other insect-eating birds both in the South and North, the destruction of the national wealth by insects forges to the front as a subject of vital importance. The logic of the situation is so simple a child can see it. Short crops mean higher prices. If ten per cent of our vegetable food supply is destroyed by insects, as certain as fate we will feel itin the increased cost of living.
I would like to place Mr. Marlatt's report in the hands of every man, boy and school-teacher in America; but I have not at my disposal the means to accomplish such a task. I cannot even print it here in full, but the vital facts can be stated, briefly and in plain figures.
Crops And Insects.
Corn.—The principal insect enemies of corn are the chinch bug, corn-root worm (Diabrotica longicornis), bill bug, wire worm,boll-worm or ear-worm, cut-worm, army worm, stalk worm, grasshopper, and plant lice, in all a total of about fifty important species! Several of these pests work secretly. At husking time the wretched ear-worm that ruins the terminal quarter or fifth of an immense number of ears, is painfully in evidence. The root-worms work insidiously, and the moles and shrews are supposed to attack them and destroy them. The corn-root worm is charged with causing an annual loss of two per cent of the corn crop, or $20,000,000; the chinch bug another two per cent; the boll or ear-worm two per cent more. The remaining insect pests are charged with two per cent, which makes eight per cent in all, or a total of $80,000,000 lost each year to the American farmer through the ravages of insects. This is not evenly distributed, but some areas suffer more than others.
THE CUT-WORM, (Peridroma Sancia)
Very Destructive to Crops
Wheat.—Of all our cereal crops, wheat is the one that suffers most frominsects. There are three insects that cause to the wheat industry an annual loss of about ten per cent. Thechinch bugis the worst, and it is charged with five per cent ($20,000,000) of the total loss. TheHessian flycomes next in order, and occasionally rolls up enormous losses. In the year 1900, that insect caused to Indiana and Ohio alone the loss of 2,577,000acresof wheat, and the total cost to us of that insect in that year "undoubtedly approached $100,000,000." Did that affect the price of wheat or not? If not, then there is no such thing as a "law of supply and demand."
Wheat plant-liceform collectively the third insect pest destructive to wheat, of which it is reported that "the annual loss occasioned by wheat plant-lice probably does not fall short of two or three per cent of the crop."
Hay And Forage Crops.—These are attacked by locusts, grasshoppers, army worms, cut-worms, web worms, small grass worms and leaf hoppers. Some of these pests are so small and work so insidiously that even the farmer is prone to overlook their existence. "A ten per cent shrinkage from these and other pests in grasses and forage plants is a minimum estimate."
Cotton.—The great enemies of the cotton-planter are the cotton boll weevil, the bollworm and the leaf worm; but other insects inflict serious damage. In 1904 the loss occasioned by the boll weevil, chiefly in Texas, was conservatively estimated by an expert, Mr. W.D. Hunter, at $20,000,000. The boll worm of the southwestern cotton states has sometimes caused an annual loss of $12,000,000, or four per cent of the crops in the states affected. Before the use of arsenical poisons, the leaf worm caused an annual loss of from twenty to thirty million dollars; but of late years that total has been greatly reduced.
Fruits.—The insects that reduce our annual fruit crop attack every portion of the tree and its product. The woolly aphis attacks the roots of the fruit tree, the trunk and limbs are preyed upon by millions of scale insects and borers, the leaves are devastated by the all-devouring leaf worms, canker worms and tent caterpillars, while the fruit itself is attacked by the codling moth, curculio and apple maggot. To destroy fruit is to take money out of the farmer's pocket, and to attack and injure the tree is like undermining his house itself. By an annual expenditure of about $8,250,000 in cash for spraying apple trees, the destructiveness of the codling moth and curculio have been greatly reduced, but that money is itself a cash loss. Add to this the $12,000,000 of actual shrinkage in the apple crop, and the total annual loss to our apple-growers due to the codling moth and curculio is about $20,000,000. In the high price of apples, a part of this loss falls upon the consumer.
In 1889 Professor Forbes calculated that the annual loss to the fruit-growers of Illinois from insect ravages was $2,375,000. In 1892, insects caused to Nebraska apple-growers a loss computed at $2,000,000 and, in 1897, New York farmers lost $2,500,000 from that cause. "In many sections of the Pacific Northwest the loss was from fifty to seventy-five per cent." (Yearbook, page 470.)
Forests.—"The annual losses occasioned by insect pests to forests and forest products (in the United States) have been estimated by Dr. A.D. Hopkins, special agent in charge of forest insect investigations, at not less than $100,000,000. … It covers both the loss from insect damages to standing timber, and to the crude and manufactured forest products. The annual loss to growing timber is conservatively placed at $70,000,000."
THE GYPSY MOTH, (Portheria dispar)
Very Destructive to the Finest Shade Trees
There are other insect damages that we will not pause to enumerate here. They relate to cattle, horses, sheep and stored grain products of many kinds. Even cured tobacco has its pest, a minute insect known as the cigarette beetle, now widespread in America and "frequently the cause of very heavy losses."
The millions of the insect world are upon us. Their cost to us has been summed up by Mr. Marlatt in the table that appears below.
Annual Values Of Farm Products, And Losses Chargeable To Insect Pests.Official Report in the Yearbook of the Department of Agriculture, 1904.PRODUCTVALUEPERCENTAGE OF LOSSAMOUNT OF LOSSCereals$2,000,000,00010$200,000,000Hay530,000,0001053,000,000Cotton600,000,0001060,000,000Tobacco53,000,000105,300,000Truck Crops265,000,0002053,000,000Sugars50,000,000105,000,000Fruits135,000,0002027,000,000Farm Forests110,000,0001011,000,000Miscellaneous Crops58,000,000105,800,000--------------------------Total$3,801,000,000$420,100,000Animal Products1,750,000,00010175,000,000Natural Forests and Forest Products..100,000,000Products in Storage..100,000,000--------------------------GRAND TOTAL$5,551,000,000$795,100,000
Annual Values Of Farm Products, And Losses Chargeable To Insect Pests.Official Report in the Yearbook of the Department of Agriculture, 1904.PRODUCTVALUEPERCENTAGE OF LOSSAMOUNT OF LOSSCereals$2,000,000,00010$200,000,000Hay530,000,0001053,000,000Cotton600,000,0001060,000,000Tobacco53,000,000105,300,000Truck Crops265,000,0002053,000,000Sugars50,000,000105,000,000Fruits135,000,0002027,000,000Farm Forests110,000,0001011,000,000Miscellaneous Crops58,000,000105,800,000--------------------------Total$3,801,000,000$420,100,000Animal Products1,750,000,00010175,000,000Natural Forests and Forest Products..100,000,000Products in Storage..100,000,000--------------------------GRAND TOTAL$5,551,000,000$795,100,000
The millions of the insect world are upon us. The birds fight them for us, and when the birds are numerous and have nestlings to feed, the number of insects they consume is enormous. They require absolutely nothing at our hands savethe privilege of being let alone while they work for us!In fighting the insects, our only allies in nature are the songbirds, woodpeckers, shore-birds, swallows and martins, certain hawks, moles, shrews, bats, and a few other living creatures. All these wage war at their own expense. The farmers might just as well lose $8,250,000 through a short apple crop as to pay out that sum in labor and materials in spraying operations. And yet, fools that we are, we go on slaughtering our friends, and allowing others to slaughter them, under the same brand of fatuous folly that leads the people of Italy to build anew on the smoking sides of Vesuvius, after a dozen generations have been swept away by fire and ashes.
In the next chapter we will consider the work of our friends, The Birds.