by Robert Bryce
Texas Agriculture Commissioner Rick Perry doesn’t have an egg on his face. It’s
more like a large omelette, complete with cheese, onions — and since it
involves Perry — lots of ham. The reason for Perry’s embarrassment, though, doesn’t include dairy products.
Instead, it’s cotton. As a vocal supporter of the Texas Boll Weevil Eradication
Foundation (TBWEF), Perry has been one of the primary defenders of a program
that was the likely culprit for one of Texas’ worst agricultural disasters.
Texas cotton farmers will lose more than $200 million this year due to an
infestation of the beet armyworm. And many farmers and scientists believe the
disaster was man-made, caused by TBWEF’s overzealous application of a pesticide
called malathion.
In an effort to eradicate the boll weevil — a destructive cotton pest — from
500,000 acres of Texas cotton fields, TBWEF sprayed some farms more than a
dozen times with malathion. In the areas treated with the pesticide, boll
weevil populations fell dramatically. However, infestations of the beet
armyworm — another destructive cotton pest — were widespread and
catastrophic. The cotton harvest in the Rio Grande Valley was a tenth of the
expected yield. In the area around San Angelo, farmers lost more than half
their crop.
“They killed all the beneficial insects,” says Earnest Gesch, a 64-year-old
farmer whose fields were sprayed with malathion. Gesch said the malathion
applications killed the parasites that keep the armyworms in check, as well as
all the wasps that used to inhabit his barn. Gesch expects to lose $100,000 on
the 480 acres of cotton he planted near Eola. “If you’ve got plenty of
beneficials, then the armyworms aren’t going to take over,” he says.
The armyworm disaster has been particularly embarrassing for the U.S.
Department of Agriculture, which provided a quarter of TBWEF’s $15 million
budget. On September 18, two USDA entomologists, K.R. Summy and J.R. Raulston
of the agency’s Weslaco research station, released a report which concluded
that the malathion doses were “the primary causal factor for the beet armyworm
outbreak.” Comparing damage on cotton fields north of the Rio Grande with those
in Mexico which were not sprayed with malathion, the scientists concluded that
“In contrast to the crop failure that occurred in Texas, cotton producers in
the irrigated region of adjacent Tamaulipas, Mexico enjoyed a near-record
`bumper’ crop during 1995, despite the fact that many of their fields were
located only a few miles south of the Rio Grande.” The two scientists are
completing a study of the area around San Angelo, and they say their data
suggests the malathion spraying was also the culprit in that region.
Rather than admit their agency was at fault, USDA officials in Washington
quickly refuted the two scientists’ work and pledged to launch a new study to
determine the culprit. In the meantime, the USDA has declared a handful of
South Texas counties as disaster areas, thus enabling farmers in the area to
get low-interest loans. The USDA has also begun distributing more than $60
million in crop insurance claims to Texas cotton growers affected by the beet
armyworm invasion. Thus, the USDA is helping to alleviate the effects of a
disaster that it helped create. And they can’t admit their agency might be
responsible because if they did, they wouldn’t be able to distribute disaster
relief funds or pay crop insurance.
The boll weevil eradication program was supposed to make cotton farmers’ lives
easier and their farms more profitable. Instead, farmers in the Valley are
circulating a petition to end the program. A group of 10 farmers in Plainview
has sued the agency to prevent it from spraying their land, claiming that the
agency’s taxation powers violate the Texas Constitution.
Ralph Hoelscher, an organic farmer near Rowena, was able to keep TBWEF from
spraying his cotton field, and he has the best looking cotton in the county.
Hoelscher’s successful cotton crop has embarrassed TBWEF, and he says the
agency is now trying to force him not to plant cotton next year. Hoelscher says
he may file a lawsuit against TBWEF.
Of course, Perry is not the only one to blame for the TBWEF disaster. TBWEF
itself appears to be the Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight. Frank Myers, the
head of TBWEF, has shown an astonishing degree of arrogance toward anyone who
questions the program. He denies his agency could have caused the disaster.
Instead, he blames low rainfall and a mild winter. “We have a lot of reasons
for why it did happen,” he said. “There [are] just no answers.” And Myers’
agency was given protection during the last session of the Texas Legislature by
Senate Bill 1196, written by Sen. Bill Sims (D-Paint Rock) and Sen. Eddie Lucio
(D-Brownsville), which gave TBWEF governmental immunity from liability.
While farmers wail about their losses, Perry has insisted that the only
solution to the problem created by pesticides is to add more pesticides. During
visits to the San Angelo area in September, the first criticism Perry made was
of the Environmental Protection Agency, which was reluctant to allow farmers to
use expensive, experimental chemicals which were supposedly effective at
controlling the armyworm. However, even if the chemicals were available, their
cost — at $25 per acre — was prohibitively expensive for most farmers.
Perry has also blamed Mexico for the disaster. In a letter written in
September to U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas), Perry said, “The
eradication program cannot be completely successful if the boll weevil problem
is not simultaneously addressed in Mexico.” But scientists and farmers in the
Valley say the problem isn’t Mexico, it’s the eradication program. They say
that the Valley’s sub-tropical climate makes it virtually impossible to
completely get rid of the pest.
Clearly, the boll weevil eradication effort has been a failure. It is the
ultimate example of man trying to conquer nature and failing miserably. But the
hubris of TBWEF and Perry apparently knows no bounds. Next year, TBWEF plans to
add an additional 1.1 million acres to the eradication effort. And the USDA
will again chip in as much as $5 million to help fund the program.
Farmers are worried. And in the Valley, Maurice Lukefahr, a research scientist
at Rio Farms, a non-profit agricultural research institution northeast of
McAllen, says farmers have no choice but to try to end the program. If they
don’t, he says, they will face the same problems again next year. “Any way you
look at it, this was a man-made disaster,” he said.
Bunch Sues
Bill Bunch, indefatigable lawyer for the Save Our Springs Legal Defense Fund(SOSLDF), filed a lawsuit on October 20 against U.S. Interior Secretary Bruce
Babbitt for failing to add the Barton Springs Salamander to the Endangered
Species List. The suit, filed in federal district court in Midland, lists
SOSLDF and Dr. Mark Kirkpatrick, a UT zoologist, as plaintiffs. No word yet on
when the case will be heard.
This article appears in November 3 • 1995 and November 3 • 1995 (Cover).