Established officially in 1978, the Boll Weevil Eradication Program worked so effectively that most producers today have never laid eyes on one of the pests. Even seasoned cotton producers say they don’t remember a time when the boll weevil was an issue.
“I’ve never seen one in my life,” said David Dunlow of North Carolina, who began farming for himself in 1985 — eight years after the BWEP had been established in his home state. “ They are pretty much eradicated all the way down to the Mexican border, but it took many years of work,” Dunlow adds.
As of 2012, when Louisiana was officially declared weevil-free, the boll weevil has been functionally eradicated from the entire Cotton Belt, with one exception — the Lower Rio Grande Valley. This area exists as a type of buffer zone between migratory boll weevils from Mexico and the rest of the American Cotton Belt.
Why then, growers might ask, does there continue to be a per-acre assessment to fund the Boll Weevil Eradication Program?
According to officials inside the program, the answer is that “eradication” is a status that, once achieved, must be actively maintained.
“All cotton growers have to have an understanding of how connected we all are,” says Patrick Burson, Chief Operating Officer of the Texas Boll Weevil Eradication Foundation (TBWEF), which oversees the Lower Rio Grande Valley area.
Burson and the TBWEF have, in recent years, acted in cooperation with Mexican partners to help draw down the number of boll weevils in the north Mexican state of Tamaulipas, where some 6,000 acres of cotton have been planted in 2026.
When TBWEF began working with Mexican officials back in 2020, they were capturing “just a little bit over 40,000 weevils in a year” in the Lower Rio Grande Valley buffer zone, Burson says. The eradication education efforts the Americans have shared with their southern neighbors over the years have had an impact, however.
“Last year we captured 81 weevils in the Lower Rio Grande Valley, seasonlong,” says Burson, with a sense of accomplishment.
“We’ve been working with them closely since 2018,” Burson says. “As we’ve been able to make advancements in their program, and lowered the number of weevils in northern Tamaulipas, it’s lowered the number of weevils that are migrating across the river coming into Texas.”
Burson and his counterparts believe that once the weevils are functionally eradicated in the Tamaulipas region, then Texas producers across the state will be able to breathe a sigh of relief.
Still, Burson says, the industry must be on active alert against the pest, which research has shown to have the ability to fly 200 miles a year. Coastal storms and hurricanes also have the ability to transport large numbers of pests up the coast and across borders. And, says Burson, passive movement via motor vehicles also poses a threat.
“We’ve got to have a way to monitor and to pick those weevils up and know what the next steps need to be (throughout the Belt),” says Burson.
That is why there are still BWEP operations happening in every state across the Cotton Belt.
“From up in Virginia and North Carolina and all the way to California, we’re there to make sure that everybody traps at the right levels and make sure everyone understands what’s at stake for the industry as a whole,” says Burson.
Downstream Value
Eradication can pay dividends in the export market, as well. Once bales arrive in export destinations around the globe, many countries require methyl bromide fumigation in order to ensure no “hitchhiker” pests arrive with them. This requirement can cost our industry’s mill customers roughly $10 per bale, according to knowledgeable sources, although the costs may differ by country.
“One mill manager who consumes at least 50,000 bales of U.S. cotton a year explained that his annual cost to fumigate was greater than what he would need to pay a mid-level manager in his company,” says Will Bettendorf, global director of supply chain marketing for Cotton Council International. “Some mills import hundreds of thousands of U.S. bales, so you can imagine how this cost can add up quickly.”
By maintaining eradicated status for the boll weevil, the United States is able to have conversations with importers of U.S. cotton about removing the fumigation requirement for U.S. cotton shipments. This would, in turn, make U.S. cotton a more preferable option on the global market.
“The National Cotton Council and CCI have been very involved working with our international partners to get the fumigation requirement removed,” says Bettendorf. “The most recent success was with Bangladesh which is the largest raw cotton importing country globally.”
Bettendorf noted that this effort benefitted only U.S. cotton, as exports from places such as West Africa and, notably, Brazil, cannot boast of the boll weevil eradication status that the United States has maintained through active management of the pest.