Last modified: Saturday, July 12, 2008 10:12 PM PDT E. Ore. farmers say hoppers heading for crops HAINES AP) — Faced with an alarming infestation of grasshoppers that have started to move from rangeland into crop fields, farmers in northern Baker County put $46,000 into a kitty for aerial spraying of a pesticide. ‘‘We’ve had grasshoppers around here before, but this is really bad,’’ said Jan Kerns, a member of the Oregon Board of Agriculture who owns a farm in the Haines area with her husband, Tim Kerns, a Baker County commissioner. Kerns said she thought this was a typical grasshopper infestation affecting primarily dry rangeland. Then last week she was spraying weeds and noticed the ground in an alfalfa field swarming with grasshoppers. A few days later while mowing tall grass in her lawn she saw movement in the grass. She got off the mower and scraped her foot across the grass. It was covered with grasshoppers. ‘‘That’s when I became really alarmed,’’ Kerns said. At risk were wheat, potato, hay, mint and grass crops. So, on Thursday, two helicopter pilots laid down the broad spectrum Mustang Max pesticide over 3,500 acres north of Baker City. Other parts of the county are spraying as well, as many as 10,000 acres in the Baker Valley, said Joe Hill of Western Farm Service. He says supplies of the pesticide have gotten short. ‘‘We’ve had some issues getting it,’’ Hill said. ‘‘We ran out in our warehouse, so it has to come from the manufacturer, which takes a little more time.’’