Sweetberry Blight

The damage was irreparable. How stupid, how foolish of them to let this go so out of hand! The crops? Ruined. The house? uninhabitable. Our belongings? Unusable.
All the sweetberry resin in the world can't make up for all that we've lost! In fact, I'm not sure I'll ever be able to enjoy it again. Never has something so sweet seemed so horribly bitter.

— Account from the blight by a Harvest Belt farmer

The Sweetberry Blight is a natural disaster which occurs if the sweetberry beetle is permitted to reproduce and spread without any measure of control.

A Crippling Error

This was a natural disaster which plagued the Harvest Belt long ago, when the practice of cultivating sweetberry beetles first begun to gain popularity among local farmers.   The cause of this disaster was purely negligence and and poor management on the part of overzealous farmers. When sweetberry resin was discovered to be incredibly valuable and simple to farm, many were quick to jump on the opportunity, without doing their due research.
The result of this hubris was a nearly uncontrollable spread of the beetles to wide swathes of the region, causing destruction to structures, crops, and native wildlife alike. The unchecked reproduction of the sweetberry beetle became too much and wrought havoc on the land until brought back under control.

There is a reason that caution is advised for all who breed sweetberry beetles in excess.

Type

Natural

Sweet Treat

The resin produced by the sweetberry beetle is a valuable local delicacy, but this disaster nearly ruined the sweet treat for many of those afflicted, for generations moving forward. Even after managing the beetle populations and restoring their homes and fields, the distaste for the substance they left behind stuck around for a long time. It was only recently that the locals started enjoying it again, restarting production in more sustainable ways.