Georgia cotton farmers say good riddance to boll weevils

<p>Longtime central Georgia cotton farmer Billy Sanders says he couldnt be happier about the fact that this years cotton crop was completely free of boll weevils.</p><p>I live and breathe cotton, said Sanders, whose great-grandfather founded the farm that his son and nephew now operate. And I know that if we hadnt eradicated the boll weevil, the cotton industry in Georgia would be gone by now. </p><p>A controversial 15-year program that began in Virginia and the Carolinas in the 1980s has pushed boll weevils _ which destroy young cotton buds and bolls _ west as far as Arkansas and Texas.</p><p>The campaign, which employs the chemical malathion, will continue until the pests are gone from the United States and northern Mexico.</p><p>Freedom from boll weevils has given Georgia farmers the confidence to plant larger cotton crops and allowed them to experiment with new tilling techniques designed to improve soil fertility.</p><p>As a result, many farmers have now dramatically scaled back on chemical use and are trying chemical-free strategies such as bringing in beneficial insects that prey on or displace pests.</p><p>My father and grandfather would have done just about anything to be free from boll weevils, Sanders said. Everyone in the cotton industry here has been given a new breath of life.</p><p>A coordinated boll weevil eradication program began in Virginia and the Carolinas in the early 1980s and moved methodically west each season. The Georgia effort started in 1987 and the state gained the upper hand in 1993 when boll weevils were becoming scarce here.</p><p>However, the boll weevil eradication effort has been controversial.</p><p>Cotton fields border homes, schools and towns throughout the Southeast, and rural residents have reported respiratory problems, skin irritation and water pollution that they blame on heavy insecticide use.</p><p>In Texas, a USDA report said a 1995 outbreak of beet army worms was caused by wall-to-wall crop spraying that wiped out spiders, wasps and other predators.</p><p>Georgia farmers planted about 1.4 million acres of cotton this year, up from a low of 115,000 acres in 1983, and a surge in demand from China and other cotton importers lifted prices to the highest levels in years.</p><p>Georgia, which ranks second in U.S. cotton production behind Texas, produced a record crop based on quality, quantity per acre and revenue that topped $780 million.</p><p>The crop, along with price hikes in other Georgia commodities, is being credited with a surge in rural spending this year on everything from new homes to farm machinery.</p><p>Boll weevils first entered the United States from Mexico near Brownsville, Texas, in 1892 and marched relentlessly northeast, covering the Mississippi Delta and other cotton regions. The insects can fly up to 60 miles a day depending on winds.</p><p>The bugs dont eat plant leaves the way grasshoppers do. Instead, female boll weevils drill their long, curved snouts into young cotton buds and bolls and lay their eggs inside. The larvae feed on young fruit and cotton fibers so that the plants produce little if any cotton.</p><p>Farmers tried intensive chemical use in the 1960s and 1970s, but the toxic chemicals killed indiscriminately and only in confined areas. Pests from surrounding fields would quickly reinfest areas that already had been sprayed.</p>

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