PROTECTING THE UNITED STATES FROM 



PLANT PESTS 



By Charles Lester Marlatt 



Chairman, Federal Horticultural Board, U. S. Department of Agriculture 



With Photographs from the U. S. Department of Agriculture 



Some ten years ago the National Geographic Magazine, by the publication 

 of an article on ''pests and parasites," aided materially in securing the passage of a 

 national law to prevent importation of insect-infested and diseased plants * The 

 accompanying article and the illustrations indicate the character of plant pests 

 which are being intercepted by this law. 



PRIOR to 191 2 there was no au- 

 thority in law to protect the United 

 States from the entry of new plant 

 enemies or to control and prevent the dis- 

 tribution within the United States of any 

 such enemies which may have gained 

 limited foothold. 



Not only could plants be imported by 

 nursery and florist establishments without 

 regard to their freedom from pests, but, 

 in the absence of any protective legisla- 

 tion, America became a dumping ground 

 for the plant refuse of other countries. 



It was common practice of big nursery 

 establishments abroad to consign, without 

 order, tons of their culls to department 

 stores, to florists, and even to auctioneers 

 of this country, to be sold or given away 

 by such stores or auctioned for what they 

 would bring. 



This freedom of entry, in the absence 

 of authority for inspection or other in- 

 surance of freedom from insect pests and 

 diseases, has resulted during the last cen- 

 tury in the establishment in the United 

 States of an enormous number of foreign 

 plant pests which are, and will remain, a 

 tremendous burden on the garden, field, 

 and forest productions of this country. 



THE FOOD BILE OF PLANT PESTS OF 

 FOREIGN ORIGIN 



Several years ago the Department of 

 Agriculture issued a careful analysis of 

 the losses caused to the principal crops 

 of the United States by insect pests, 



* Pests and Parasites ; Why We Need a 

 National Law to Prevent Importation of In- 

 sect-Infested and Diseased Plants. By Charles 

 Lester Marlatt. National Geographic Maga- 

 zine, April, 191 1. 



showing that these losses amounted to 

 upward of a billion dollars a year, a sum 

 at that time more than sufficient to meet 

 the entire cost of the administration of 

 the Federal Government ! That was 

 under the old price of crops. Under 

 recent prices these losses would approxi- 

 mate two billion dollars annually ! f 



These estimates relate solely to losses 

 due to the insect pests and take no ac- 

 count of the losses due to such plant dis- 

 eases as the grain rusts and smuts and 

 the mildews, blights, and hundreds of 

 other diseases affecting every important 

 crop and also many forest trees and orna- 

 mentals. Such plant diseases probably 

 occasion losses fully comparable to those 

 due to insects. 



These losses are caused by a host of 

 pests, insect and fungous, that affect 

 fruits, farm crops, and forest trees, but 

 more than §0 per cent of these losses are 

 due to insect and diseases which have 

 come to us from foreign lands. Among 

 these are some of the worst enemies of 

 our principal crops. 



Examples of such are the Hessian fly, 

 the boll weevil of cotton, the alfalfa 

 weevil, the Japanese beetle, the San Jose 

 scale, and such plant diseases as the wheat 

 smut, pine blister rust, citrus canker, 

 potato wart, chestnut blight, and many 

 others. 



Altogether, these unwelcome immi- 

 grants, insects and diseases, include up- 

 ward of 100 important plant enemies and 



t The detailed discussion of these losses is 

 published in the Year Book of the Department 

 of Agriculture for 1904, and a later summary 

 is given in the report of the Roosevelt Na- 

 tional Conservation Commission. 



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