LITTLE ROCK — Despite being boll weevil free for years, Arkansas still needs an eradication program to make sure the pest never returns to wreak havoc on the state’s $450 million cotton industry, the state Plant Board director told lawmakers Monday.
“It’s been a very successful program and we haven’t caught a boll weevil in Arkansas in three years,” Plant Board Director Darryl Little said during a meeting of the Senate and House Committees on Agriculture, Forestry and Economic Development.
“We have a tremendous investment in eradicating this pest so we will always have to have detection traffic to make sure the weevils don’t come in from Mexico, or right now even southern Texas,” Little said.
Legislators endorsed a recommendation to keep the fee paid by farmers in the Northeast Delta Zone — which includes Mississippi County and half of Craighead County — to support the eradication program at $14 per acre for at least one more year.
Little said he expects the fee to possibly be reduced in 2013.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
Eventually, the fee could drop to around $2 an acre, he said, adding that when the Boll Weevil Eradication Foundation’s $9 million debt is paid off and the foundation’s coffer’s are replenished to $1 million or more the fee could end.
The eradication program began in 1999 and is being paid by farmers in five eradication zones through an assessment based on the number of cotton acres they grow. The assessment ranges from $5 to $14 an acre, depending on the region of the state.
Little said about $250 million has been spent on boll weevil eradication since 1999.
The fees in four of the zones are set by the farmers within the zones, who voted to participate in the program. Farmers in the Northeast Delta Zone, however, voted against joining the eradication program. After an extended legal battle, the Arkansas Supreme Court ruled in 2005 that the Plant Board had the authority under the Boll Weevil Suppression Eradication Act of 1991 to move forward with the program in that area, despite not having the two-thirds support by landowners.
The Plant Board now sets the fee annually for the Northeast Delta Zone.