Grasshopper — Identification & Control

Grasshoppers are the familiar large jumping insects most people encounter in meadows, tall grass, and garden edges throughout the warm months. With their powerful hind legs, short antennae, and strong chewing mouthparts, they feed on a wide range of plant material — leaves, stems, and flowers — and while a few grasshoppers in a yard cause no meaningful damage, outbreak years can bring enough of them to noticeably strip garden plants and field crops.

Grasshoppers are not a household or structural pest and pose no risk to people or pets; the concern is purely for gardens, ornamental plantings, and agricultural crops during periods of high population density, usually following a mild winter and dry spring that favors egg survival. They are also frequently confused with locusts, which are technically the same insect family but only earn the "locust" name when they form dense migratory swarms — a phenomenon not seen in North Carolina.