How special fee helped North Carolina eradicate a threat to its signature cotton crops

Paying into a fund monitoring an eradicated insect that nearly wiped out North Carolina's cotton crop a century ago could easily be translated to a tax.

This one is pretty good for the nation's fifth leading producer of the soft, fluffy staple fiber.

“In North Carolina, we are completely eradicated,” Bill Foote, director of the state agriculture department’s plant industry division told The Center Square.

The boll weevil nearly wiped out North Carolina’s cotton crop in the 1920s. It was finally eradicated in 1980.

A surveillance program by the nonprofit Boll Weevil Eradication Foundation of North Carolina has kept the boll weevil away. Cotton farmers pay 75 cents per acre to fund the program to monitor cotton crops and respond quickly to any signs of the pest.

Last year, the foundation put out 7,125 traps, each one monitoring about 57 acres. There were 403,388 acres of cotton planted in the state in 48 counties.

North Carolina is the northernmost state for major cotton production, Foote said. Planting will get started in about two months.

“What we are looking for is any incursion from the South,” Foote said. “We’re pretty sure that if it got into North Carolina, we would find out about it.”

Nationally, there have been only a few detections recently, those in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, Foote said.

The boll weevil swept into the United States from Mexico in the 1890s and eventually caused $23 billion in damage to cotton crops, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

In 1978, North Carolina and Virginia launched a successful trial eradication program that became a model that was expanded to all the cotton-producing states.

“All of the 15 million acres of U.S. cotton are involved in the program, and the weevil has been eradicated in 98% of that production area,” according to USDA.

Marshall Grant of Garysburg was a key player in implementing the eradication program and was the first inductee to the national Cotton Hall of Fame.

“Known as Mr. Boll Weevil, Grant is honored for his vision and integral role in developing and advocating the Boll Weevil Eradication Program,” the Hall of Fame states. “The program is among the most successful in the history of the United States Department of Agriculture. It not only removed one of the greatest threats to the U.S. cotton industry, but helped advance the sustainable gains that U.S. cotton growers continue to achieve.”

Grant’s son, David Grant, is a current board member of the Boll Weevil Eradication Foundation of North Carolina.

In the mid 1920s, North Carolina had 2 million acres planted in cotton, David told The Center Square.

“By 1980, we were down to 40,000 acres,” he said. “Right after we finished eradication, cotton acres started zooming back up.”

Today, most North Carolina cotton farmers have never seen a boll weevil, David said.

The monitoring program helps ensure that the pest will remain a distant memory.

“Nobody wants to fight that battle again,” David said.