# How did hunter-gatherer communities (not herders, not crop farmers) deal with locust swarms? <cite>by u/wotan_weevil (flaired user)</cite> ## Metadata - Author: [[wotan_weevil]] at [[rAskHistorians]] - Real Title: How did hunter-gatherer communities (not herders, not crop farmers) deal with locust swarms? : AskHistorians - Link: https://reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/r2u8ak/how_did_huntergatherer_communities_not_herders - [i] Outline - [[foragers are less vulnerable to locusts than agriculturalists]] - [[foragers eat a varied diet]] - [[lower population densities are more sustainable]] - [[locust collection methods]] ## Question > "They ate them" seems sort of obvious on the face of it, but I guess I'm trying to get a sense of how big a deal locusts swarms were to non-agricultural peoples in history. I know they've been a problem since before Biblical times in places like Egypt, but I can't find anything about how much a locust swarm might impact, say, the huge percentage of people during the "early state building" period who didn't live in Mesopotamia. Was it even an issue for them? Was it as devastating to them as it would have been to river valley farmers? - Asked on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/EleanorKonik/status/1463261608990461952?t=29V0bI-NIEuDB5uAsXh3cA) 2021-11-23 ## Highlights ### id253461192 foragers are less vulnerable to locusts than agriculturalists > **Foragers (i.e., hunter-gatherers) are less vulnerable to locusts than farmers and herders.** Why? We can begin with the damage caused by locusts. Locust swarms eat a *lot*, but they have food preferences. Their most-commonly favoured food is grass - locust can deprive herders of grazing for their herds, and can easily devastate cereal crops. Depending on the timing (i.e., when during the life cycles of the plants they are attacked by locusts), the damage can vary from killing the crop, damaging the crop enough to reduce yields, and negligible (e.g, if the seed heads are mature, in which case locusts might eat all the of the leaves, but the seed heads are left and are harvestable). Farmers who depend on cereals typically obtain the majority of their calories from their cereal crops, and locust damage can result in serious famine (especially since locusts will also eat other crops, and also some wild plants used as "famine food"). The second preference of food for locusts, after grasses, is your and tender leaves - this include almost all annual plants grown as crops in their early stages of growth. Similarly to cereals, the yields of some crops will be little affected by locusts. For example, legumes with dried or drying mature pods will usually still be harvestable, tubers and other root crops can remain unharmed underground even if the above-ground part of the plant is completely eaten, plants such as bitter cassava avoid locust attack due to the toxicity of their leaves, etc. ### id253461226 foragers eat a varied diet > **Foragers are typically much less dependent on grasses.** While they might gather wild cereals, this would usually be only a minor part of their diet, and the loss of local cereals will usually be survivable. Foraging peoples usually eat a wide range of plant foods, many of which are relatively resistant to locusts, such as tubers, cat-tail roots, various nuts, etc. Some foragers might be badly affected by locusts, if they depend heavily on cereals, or on hunting grazing animals. ### id253461315 lower population densities are more sustainable > **Foragers live at lower population densities.** Even if locusts have stripped an area of most plants, foragers are much more likely to be able to find enough food to avoid starvation than farming peoples, due to their lower population density. (This is also the case if severe drought or flood has reduced the amount of available food.) Events such as locust swarms, drought, and flood can result in starvation for foragers, but their death rates will usually be lower than those of traditional farming peoples in similar circumstances. ### id253461907 locust collection methods > Finally, foragers can also take advantage of a common resource used to reduce the chance of famine when locusts swarm (also used by agricultural peoples): eat the locusts. Locusts can often be collected in large numbers when they swarm, and can be dried to allow storage. Locusts can be collected one-by-one when they are on the ground or on plants, but this is relatively labour-intensive. Large scale collection can be done by driving locusts into an enclosure, or a trench, or a stream (which has the advantage of drowning them). Salt lakes in the Great Basin in the USA provided very efficient collection - not only would the locusts drown, they would also be salted, aiding preservation. The Great Salt Lake, in particular, provided large numbers of locusts - the wind would blow drowned (and salted) locusts to shore, where they would accumulate in drifts possibly 6 feet high, and kilometres long. One mathematician (probably Mormon Apostle Orson Pratt) estimated an annual quantity of 1.5 million bushels of drowned locusts due to the Great Salt Lake. Snake Indian groups in the area (who were foraging rather than agricultural peoples) often collected them in large enough numbers to provide 4 months of food over winter. While white settlers in the area saw locusts as a serious pest, indigenous peoples in the area saw them as a valuable food resource. For more on hunting and eating locusts in the Great Basin, see: > > While foraging peoples in other locust-prone areas were not usually blessed with automatic collectors-and-salters like the Great Salt Lake, locusts were regularly hunted and eaten by many of those peoples and could be collected in large numbers when swarming. > > Of course, agricultural peoples could, and often did, collect and eat locusts when they swarmed (not recommended today if the locust swarms have been sprayed with pesticides!).] See also: [[pesticides make locus plagues worse]]