De Smet Farm Mutual Insurance Co

hailstorm eddying and whirling about like the wild, dead leaves in an autumn storm ... they circle in myriads about you, beating against everything animate or inanimate; driving into open doors and windows; heaping about your feet and around your buildings; their jaws constantly at work biting …."(2) For many years, the accepted explanation for the locust’s demise was a vague conspiracy of vast ecological changes. Entomologists said the disappearance of bison, the decline of fires set by Indians, and changes in climate had altered the locust’s prairie habitats. But research by Jeffrey Lockwood, a professor of entomology at the University of Wyoming, points to human alterations of the environment. In the locust’s home ranges in the river valleys of Wyoming and Montana, the pioneers diverted streams for irrigation,

The green area represents those areas hardest hit by the locust plagues of the 1870s.

allowing cattle and sheep to graze in riparian areas, and eliminating beavers and their dams. The result was “the pioneers unknowingly wiped out locust sanctuaries,” inadvertently causing the most spectacular “success” in the “history of economic entomology — the only complete elimination of an agricultural pest species.”(5)

ALWAYS HERE. ALWAYS CARING.

A graphic depiction of a swarm of locusts devouring a wheat field.

SOURCES

For over 100 years, De Smet Farm Mutual has been helping to protect what we all love about South Dakota. While it may take some time to recognize our new look, you can have confidence that the values our company was founded on are stronger than ever.

(1) timeline.com/in-the-1870s-12-trillion-locusts-devastated-the-great-plainsand-then-they-went-extinct-6f7c51a15d90 (2) “The Grasshopper Plagues in Iowa,” by John E. Briggs in The Iowa Journal of

History and Politics, Vol. 13. Published 1915. (3) “When The Skies Turned To Black. The Locust Plague of 1875.” hearthstonelegacy.com/when-the-skies-turned-to-black-the_locust-plagueof-1875.htm (4) “Grasshopper Plagues and Early Dakota Agriculture, 1864-1876.” By Harold E.

Briggs. Agricultural History, vol. 8, no. 2, Agricultural History Society, www.jstor.org/stable/3739497. Published 1934. (5) ”The Death of the Super Hopper: How early settlers unwittingly drove their nemesis extinct, and what it means for us today.” Professor Jeffrey Lockwood,

University of Wyoming. High Country News. www.hcn.org/issues/243/13695 (6) History of the Counties of Woodbury and Plymouth, Iowa. Published 1891.

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(605) 854-3337 www.DeSmetFarmMutual.com