The War on the Hop Louse
Prominent farmer Ezra Meeker warns that local growers must act immediately to spray their crops or face total ruin.
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Probably more than nine-tenths of the hop growers of the state of Washington intend spraying their hops, 'if necessary,' as the phrase goes, to save the crop. I know this from personal assertion as well as from the tone of a large correspondence with the growers. This phrase, 'if necessary,' covers a multitude of reservations, in that some intend to wait for a 'base attack' of lice before even preparing to fight, while others, while prepared, are awaiting developments before beginning. I have just made the rounds of a dozen or more of the hop fields and find the lice and fly in every one of them, and now, if the hop farmers intend to do anything to save their crop, now is the time to act. I have the English and American sprayers at work in our Kent hop yards, and any one can go there and see the practical demonstration of the work done. The main thing now is whatever is done ought to be done promptly. Late or 'half-way' work is worse than useless. We know that the crop can be saved if thorough work is done, and I write this word of warning, believing the time has arrived to act.
“Late or 'half-way' work is worse than useless, as we know by last year's experience of not only losing the hops but also the additional expense of the feeble effort made to save them.”
Ezra Meeker, later famous for his cross-country wagon train expeditions to mark the Oregon Trail, was at this time the king of Washington's hop industry. His plea echoes the perennial tension in Washington agriculture between early intervention to save a harvest and the high cost of the equipment required to do so.
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