Can we make locust and grasshopper management sustainable?

Scale is the fundamental conceptual problem in assessing the sustainability or value of controlling grasshoppers or locusts. Using case studies from North America (United States: Wyoming), Africa (Eritrea), and Asia (Russia: Irkutsk), we analyzed the viability of control programs. There are at least four dimensions to acridid pest management. At the geopolitical scale, all three cases reveal that although the greatest cost/risk of acridid outbreaks accrues locally, distant governments play a primary role despite recent, undirected trends toward decentralization. Examination of the social scale reveals that in all three cases, the individual farm/ranch is the fundamental unit of concern, but these units place high value on preventing acridid infestations from spreading to neighboring lands. None of the systems appear to be driven by the agrochemical industry; rather, the motive force is food security (Eritrea), food quality (Wyoming), or both (Irkutsk). With respect to the interest scale, in all three systems agriculturalists have nothing to gain and much to lose from acridid outbreaks, as compared to the general public (no gains, modest losses), agrochemical industries (low gains, no losses), and governments (low gains, modest losses). In terms of the temporal scale, extremely rapid (and localized) losses and short-term (annual) productivity define the situation for farmers/ranchers, while governments exhibit far slower and longer-term responses and perspectives. From these findings, the keys and obstacles to sustainable acridid pest management are discussed.