Grasshoppers would be my guess.

Where are you located?

Have you seen grasshoppers around. ?

Rick

I have seen grasshoppers. we are in central oklahoma

What do you use to deter the grasshoppers?

Pretty central in oklahoma.

That is unfornuate if its just grasshoppers. We do have quite a bit grasshoppers but we have a lot of grass around so you would think they would not focus their attack on my okra

RIght now the resident grasshopper is focusing on the eggplants and ignoring the okra. She'll be a dead grasshopper if I can catch her.

In the past there was a thread about grasshoppers and how to kill them. The solution seemed to be to catch and kill.

While it is probably grasshoppers, there is a disease, cotton root rot. If you pull a stalk and its roots are decayed. https://extension.okstate.edu/fact-sheets/phymatotrichum-root-rot.html#

Mine gets attacked by root knot nematodes.

We have lubber grasshoppers here. I kill them on sight - usually stomping them to death - no mercy!