Locusts in southern settler societies: Argentine and australian experience and responses, 1880-1940

Abstract

Locust invasions were a problem common to many colonial settler societies, for whom agricultural development was crucial to success. Their impact on crops and pastures caused repeated losses and hardships for the nascent farming enterprises. In the southern lands of Argentina and Australia the initial hopes that bringing more land under cultivation, restoring the ‘balance of nature’, using disease organisms for biological control, or collective labour would solve the problem faded as swarms kept appearing. An increase in the frequency and intensity of plagues during the late nineteenth century created a fear that farming might become impossible and an urgency to find scientific solutions. The migrations of swarms across provincial boundaries and areas of cultivation propagated the risk of damage over wide geographic regions and into subsequent seasons. This led to government involvement in organising and funding collective responses and directing scientific research into locust ecology.

In both countries government departments were established to promote ‘progressive agriculture’ based upon scientific practice. Although the institutional frameworks involved in the modernisation of agriculture differed, the trajectory toward the appointment of entomologists as public scientists with a particular focus on locusts converged on a similar set of concerns. All grappled with the problematic taxonomy, distribution patterns and ecology of the locusts. The ways of addressing issues of collective participation in locust control also differed, but the ecological questions and attempted technical solutions drew on worldwide scientific expertise and experience of control methods. In spite of their different colonial, political and cultural histories, close parallels existed in the scientific responses to plagues in Australia and Argentina. These were shaped by similarities in the geography and agricultural history of their grassland ecosystems, as were the population irruptions of the locusts native to each country. The commitment to finding scientific means of dealing with this shared environmental challenge led to explorations of the same potential biological and ecological solutions, but a divergence and dependence on different control technologies. We examine the historical record of locusts written by the scientists, farmers and other workers who experienced them in the agricultural landscape. Show more