Divisi
Grasshoppers
· Insect
Photo: Geo Lightspeed7 · CC BY-SA 4.0
Grasshoppers are hard-bodied, jumping insects with big back legs and short, stiff feelers. Both the wingless young — called nymphs or 'hoppers' — and the winged adults chew leaves, stems and young shoots with strong jaws. They breed on the grassy edges, fallow land and roadsides around your field, then march into the crop in waves, usually massing on the rows nearest the grass. They hit seedlings hardest and, in outbreak years that follow good rains, can strip a whole young stand of maize, sorghum, pearl millet, cowpea, groundnut or cotton down to bare stems.
GodswillSE · CC BY 4.0 
Ssemmanda will · CC BY-SA 4.0
Why it matters
Grasshoppers can eat up to a third — 30% — of your harvest, and they bite hardest when your crop is youngest: a seedling chewed down to the stem is dead, and that gap in the row is one you cannot fill later in the season. They breed in the grass, fallow and roadsides all around your field and keep coming in wave after wave, so even after you clear the ones you can see, more march in from next door. That is why they are so hard to beat once they settle in — the real fix is to hit their breeding ground on your field edges while the crop is still small, not just the hoppers sitting on your plants today.
When to act
Several hoppers per square metre with visible defoliation of seedlings, or ragged feeding on more than 1 in 5 young plants along field edges.
This guidance is general, compiled from published agronomic references including FAO and CABI. Thresholds and timing shift with your crop, your variety and the season.
In much of the region a spray is simply called mushonga — medicine. But a chemical group you cannot name is one you cannot rotate, and a product you did not write down has no pre-harvest interval you can observe. Mushonga, and other farming words →
The full grasshoppers field guide
- Identify it
- Scout for it
- Control it
12 field-guide sections in the app
The full guide to grasshoppers — every symptom to check, how and when to walk your field looking for it, and the controls that actually work, ranked. Built into your crop plan, so you are told to look before it costs you a harvest.
Crops it affects
Frequently asked questions
How do I identify grasshoppers?
Look at the damage first — it comes from the edges in. Leaves are chewed ragged from the outside, with notched, uneven margins and holes (not neat rows or clean shot-holes), and young seedlings are clipped or stripped right down to a bare stem. The chewing is almost always worst on the rows next to grass, fallow or a roadside and eases off as you walk deeper into the field — that 'damage fading inward from one side' is the grasshopper's signature.
When should I take action against grasshoppers?
Several hoppers per square metre with visible defoliation of seedlings, or ragged feeding on more than 1 in 5 young plants along field edges.
How do I control grasshoppers?
Prevent first — take away their nursery. Grasshoppers lay their eggs in egg pods (clusters of eggs the females push down into bare, undisturbed soil), so keep field edges, fallow patches and roadside strips weeded and slashed short, leaving them nowhere to breed or hide. Before the season, plough or hoe those margins and old fallow to turn the egg pods up to the surface, where they dry out in the sun or get eaten by birds and ants.
Which crops does grasshoppers affect?
Among the crops covered here: Cotton, Cowpea, Fonio, Groundnut, Maize, Pearl millet, Sorghum, Teff.
Catch it before it costs you a harvest
Divisi builds scouting into your crop plan — it tells you when to walk your field, what to look for at that stage, and what to do when you find it. Free for farmers, works offline.
Check what grows on your farm