The War on Lice in the Hop Fields
A local hop merchant reveals the specific, labor-intensive chemical formula needed to save the crop from blight.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Regarding the situation in the hop market and the outlook for the coming crop, Phil Neis yesterday said: 'The market is rotten. There is no demand and prices are very low—in fact there is no market. As for the coming crop, I find that there are no lice in the yards in which the vines have been sprayed twice. It killed them, but in the yards in which no spraying has been done there are plenty of lice. Therefore the only thing for farmers to do is to keep spraying. The most effective solution for spraying is six pounds of whale oil soap and seven and one-half to eight pounds of quassia chips dissolved in 100 gallons of water. The chips are boiled in a portion of the water and the soap dissolved in another portion. The tea from the chips is then mixed with the remainder of the water in the tank and the soap water added.'
“The market is rotten. There is no demand and prices are very low—in fact there is no market.”
The 1892 hop market was a fickle, globalized commodity sector, much like Washington's modern agricultural exports. This desperate search for a 'miracle' spray echoes the ongoing tension between industrial agriculture's dependence on chemical interventions and the looming threat of environmental collapse.
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