Board to approve Ag commissioner contract to enforce bollworm policy
City News Service
RIVERSIDE, Calif. (KESQ) – The Board of Supervisors tomorrow is slated to approve the Riverside County Office of Agriculture Commissioner’s proposed contract with the state to monitor programs intended to ensure containment of any pink bollworm threats to cotton crops countywide.
The office has entered into agreements with the California Department of Food & Agriculture annually for the last decade or so to manage the Pink Bollworm Cotton Plowdown Program. The new contract, valued at $5,000, would be retroactive to Nov. 1 and expire on June 30.
Under the agreement, the county’s agricultural inspectors would be responsible for tallying all acreage reserved for cotton crops and track whether those parcels where pink bollworm populations were previously identified remain plowed under, uncultivated.
No recent evidence has emerged of major bollworm activity in cotton growing areas of Riverside County. However, the pest remains an ongoing concern to farmers statewide and throughout various locations in the Southwest United States, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Cotton crop production comprises about $13 million in value countywide.
Pink bollworms were first identified in the United States in 1917, arriving via Mexico, where agricultural officials said they were likely imported from Egypt.
The pests originate from moths laying eggs in cotton bolls. The larvae consume cotton stalks from the inside out.
By the 1960s, agricultural programs utilizing insecticides and radiation-sterilized male moths had netted successes destroying the pink bollworm population. The creatures resurfaced, however, and remained a persistent problem going into the early 2000s, when farmers began planting genetically modified “Bt” cotton crops, which proved largely resistant to the creatures.
Despite this, the bollworms have evolved, in some cases hardening their immunities to the modified crops. Though their numbers are no longer a major threat, crops where they are found have to be plowed down, officials said.