While drought is bad for practically everything else that grows, it often promotes a good crop of grasshoppers, according to Texas AgriLife Extension Service experts.

“Grasshopper populations are normally maintained at lower levels by natural controls, including diseases,” said Chris Sansone, AgriLife Extension entomologist of San Angelo. “The main disease is a fungus and most fungi do better during cool wet conditions.

“Since we didn’t have cool, wet conditions in the spring, the fungus isn’t thriving and since the fungus isn’t thriving, we’re having higher populations of grasshoppers.”

There also are some effects with bare ground warming up faster in the spring that favors grasshopper outbreaks, he said.

The grasshopper reports from AgriLife Extension agents were more common in East Texas and South Texas around San Antonio.

The hit-and-miss outbreaks are most likely because of there being other factors involved, Sansone said.

“This year has been interesting because the drought has been so severe,” he said. “If people haven’t had any showers at all — even those late afternoon showers of a tenth or two-tenths of an inch — we’re not seeing any grasshopper outbreaks.”

Sansone said this is probably because there’s not enough food in pastures and range land to sustain even a grasshopper population.

More information on grasshoppers can be found in the AgriLife Extension publication “Grasshoppers and Their Control,” available at http://insects.tamu.edu/extension/publications/epubs/e-209.cfm.