As might be expected, the first farmers in Southeast Idaho faced less insect pressure than their counterparts did in already settled areas. The predacious and unwanted species found elsewhere, which spread in number alongside the cultivation of their host plants, had yet to arrive, so only native insects--like grasshoppers--proved to be impediments.
To combat insect damage, early farmers enlisted a substance called "Paris Green", an arsenic based powder also used as a rodenticide and famous as a pigment for painters as a rich, dark green with undertones of blue--and used at the painter's risk. It is widely recognized as the first chemical insecticide, discovered to be so by midwest farmers battling the Colorado Potato Beetle.
The highly toxic substance resulted in many illnesses and deaths at its production facilities, and killed eleven children in Vermont in 1879 who drank from a stream contaminated by a farmer when he disposed of potato plant tops he had dusted with Paris Green.
Apple farmers in western Idaho used it against the apple moth, which apparently hadn't reached southeast Idaho in large numbers in the 1910s, given the boasts of local apple growers who offered a gold piece to anyone who found a wormy apple in their shipments. Despite those boasts, the state inspector issued a warning to Fremont and Bingham growers to get "poison on the fruit and foliage before the first brood of worms begins to work." He recommended Paris Green, white arsenic and arsenic of lead as insecticides.
Some farmers used sulphur on afflicted crops and carbon bisulphide as a solution to gopher and other rodent problems. Others applied kerosene emulsion to trees. "London Purple", another arsenic-based substance but slightly less toxic, was also used.
Fred Kleinschmidt, a Blackfoot dairyman, had witnessed the grasshopper scourges of 1898 and 1901 in western Nebraska when clouds of hoppers "obscured the sun". Farmers there mixed Paris Green with bran in tubs, then drove around fields spreading the bran for the hoppers to feed on and die. The farmers also used coal oil placed on water in a trough 4' X 8' in size and six inches deep, which they dragged around the field--the hoppers, as they were disturbed, would jump into the trough where, oil-covered and thus immobilized--they eventually drowned.
DDT (Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane), though first synthesized in 1874, wasn't known as an insecticide until 1939, when it was used in WWII against typhus and malaria. The Idaho Falls stockyard demonstrated it in the summer of 1945 and it became available to the public in October, becoming an immediate hit for Idaho sheepmen. American Falls herdsmen sprayed their flocks as they were run through a chute, spraying 1500 ewes and lambs an hour with a 400 lb. PSI sprayer. The chemical worked well to control wood ticks and sheep ticks and would be used to spray for mosquitoes in grazing areas.
Under the supervision of entomologists and University researchers from the Aberdeen Research facility, DDT was trialed on potato fields in the summer of 1945 in the hopes of eradicating wireworm. It was broadcasted on the ground before plowing though it could also be applied to seed pieces or drilled into the ground after potatoes were already growing. It was being sold over the counter to homeowners and gardeners early in 1946.
DDT couldn't have arrived at a better time, in potato farmers' view, since the Colorado Potato Beetle showed up in southeast Idaho in 1944--three Bonneville County fields were found to harbor some. The beetle had been confined to southwest Idaho, though it had appeared in a carload of potatoes shipped from Idaho Falls in 1919. Upon investigation, the suspect beetles were traced to a shipment that came out of Colorado, was shipped to Oklahoma, that car going empty to Kansas CIty, then to Granger, Wyoming before arriving in Idaho Falls where it (and a few potato beetles still on a ride that started in Colorado) was loaded with spuds. It ended up in Los Angeles where the insects were discovered.
Growers applied DDT with great success, holding the beetle at bay and finding it also effective against the dreaded "tuber moth". Orchardists soon undertook its use, and cattlemen were advised that a ten cent investment toward DDT, used to eliminate grubs and other insects, would result in a hundred pound weight gain per cow.
The Forest Service bought 100,000 gallons of DDT to spray the tussock moth in 1947. Alfalfa growers used it against weevils, paying $7.75 per one hundred pounds of product. Bonneville County waged a war against houseflies, advocating DDT as the solution. The City of Idaho Falls purchased a ton of DDT for the eradication effort. Benzene hexachloride, chlordane, and chlorinated camphene were also used.
It wasn't long before the downside of DDT became apparent, with entomologists warning of the tipping of "the balance of nature" and a DDT-resistant strain of houseflies emerging in areas where the chemical had been heavily utilized. By 1949, Bonneville County was applying 17 tons of DDT and chlorate (in addition to over 6000 gallons of 2-4-D for weeds). Farmer, gardener and homemaker alike were awash in the chemical.
DDT's life as a panacea proved relatively short, however, as its systemic effect on non-targeted species was found to be significant--nearly sending the bald eagle to extinction. It was banned in the United States in 1972, but is still used for malarial control, especially in Third World countries. Snow samples at the pole yet detect its presence.
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