By Tyne Morgan
Drovers
As grasshoppers invade drought-stricken fields in North Dakota and Montana, in the South, heavy rains and flooding in late May and early June are causing a different issue, an army of fall armyworms that are demolishing crops.
“I've been looking at crops and doing this bug thing for well over 40 years, and I can tell you right now that this fall, armyworm outbreak is the worst I've seen in my career,” says Gus Lorenz, Extension entomologist for the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture.
Fall armyworms are taking over fields, hitting everything from soybeans to rice. But until this week, growers in the nation's leading rice-producing state only had one insecticide approved for use on fall armyworms in rice - pyrethroid - and Lorenz says they are growing resistant to it.