Types of Animals That Can Ruin Crops

Insects

• Some insects, such aphids and flea beetles, don't cause serious damage to crops and may just decrease production. Certain insects, however, ruin crops when left unchecked. Spinach leaf miners, a kind of fly maggot, infest spinach leaves and ruin the crop by making it unfit for food. Striped cucumber beetles attack cucumber, melon and squash by feeding on the plants and transmitting bacteria. Fully growing a crop of cucumbers or cantaloupes is virtually impossible when these pests are present. Root maggots feed on the roots of plants, causing them to wilt and often die.

Rodents

• Animals such as mice, rats, groundhogs and squirrels are considered rodents, characterized by their continuously growing incisors and lack of canine teeth. Rodents significantly damage and ruin crops before and after harvest, with the worst problems occurring in plantation crops such as sugar cane, cocoa, coconut, rice, oil palm and cereals. An estimated 20 percent of the world's food supply is contaminated or consumed by rodents each year, says Dr. Cisse W. Spragins, of Rockwell Laboratories in Minneapolis.

Birds

• Blackbirds, Canada geese, gulls and crows are examples of birds that cause severe damage to crops such as sunflowers, corn, rice, fruits, nuts and winter wheat. Producers can experience devastating losses depending on their location. Canada geese regularly graze in and trample cereal grain and soybean crops, while a grain field can be destroyed within a few days by flocks of red-winged blackbirds. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, blackbirds annually cause over $5,000,000 in losses to grain and sunflower crops in the upper Great Plains alone.

Larger Animals

• Deer, rabbits, moles, raccoons and other larger mammals can also ruin crops. In a two-year crop surveillance project done by Purdue University, nighttime cameras caught deer and raccoons gorging on crops such as soybeans, leaves and corn, in fact inflicting about 95 percent of the crop damage, according to Jasper Wildlife. Deer will consume green plants, berries, fruits and leaves in the spring and summer. In the fall and winter, they gravitate toward corn, nuts and grass. Rabbits, another major crop culprit, feed on bean, broccoli, beet, lettuce, carrot, pea and berry crops.