Bugged Out: Migratory and Agricultural Responses to the 1874 Rocky Mountain Locust Plague

This paper examines the impact of the 1874 Rocky Mountain locust invasion of the US Great Plains on internal migration and agricultural adaptive strategies. Our findings highlight the various adaptive responses of early settlers in a challenging environmental setting to a large shock. We show that individuals living in locust affected counties were, on average, 7.2 percentage points more likely to leave their home counties between 1870 and 1880 compared to those in unaffected areas. Furthermore, farmers who relocated experienced a greater increase in their occupational income scores than those who remained. As a response to the plague, the agricultural sector in affected counties saw an increase in livestock productivity, a decline in total farmland acres and the number of mid-sized farms, while there was little change in crop composition.