phosphorus insecticides have provided more effective tools for 
reducing damage by some insects. These materials have for the 
first time made it practicable to control insects on some crops. 
But along with their widespread use have come such complicating 
factors as resistance of certain pests to the materials that at 
first provided good control. 
The estimates given in Tables 6, 7, and 8 can, at best, merely 
serve as examples of losses caused by insects. The losses shown 
in these tables total $989,080,000 for the selected insects at-— 
tacking field, forage, fruit, nut, and vegetable crops, and 
$1.647,990 for those affecting ornamental roses. . Based on these 
as a sample, it is the judgment of Department entomologists that 
the annual loss from the remaining several thousand species 
attacking crops and ornamental plants in the United States was 
nearly $951,000,000 additional,. making total crop losses about 
$1,91.2,000,000 per year. Total annual losses to crops, livestock, 
forests, fabrics, households, and buildings from all insects have 
been estimated at. $3,600,000,000, and the cost of control measures 
at $00,000,000. 
In the paragraphs that follow are included notes about a number 
of insects on which loss data were too meager to be included in 
the tables. 
Field and Forage Crops 
(Table z 
Alfalfa, Clover, and Other Forage Crops 
Insects cause heavy losses to legume and grass crops, which have 
assumed increased importance with the added emphasis on grassland 
agriculture, Satisfactory estimates of the annual losses by some 
of these insects over the period 19;2-51 are not available. 
The meadow spittlebug on alfalfa and clover, which has become in- 
creasingly abundant in recent years, caused an annual loss of 
$52,230,000 in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Mary- 
lard, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, and Wisconsin. 
In 19h1 it was estimated that lygus bugs were destroying 60 per= 
cent of the alfalfa seed crop in Utah. Since 1946, with the appli- 
cation of modern insecticides to contrcl these bugs and other insects 
present on the crop, together with better use of pcllinating insects, 
the yields of alfalfa seed in Utah, Arizona, California, Idaho, New 
Mexico, Oregon, and Washington have steadily increased. 
The loss caused by the clover seed chalcid to seed alfalfa in 
Utah in 1952 amounted to $339,000, according to a cooperative State- 
Federal survey. Many of the seed growers believed that their losses 
due to this insect were two to three times as great the previous year. 
- 62 = 
