A few years ago we were at the Gulf Coast Fair and for some reason I signed up to get the Alabama Farmers and Consumers Bulletin, and it’s been coming to my mailbox ever since. (I love reading the ads for rabbits and chickens and goats and llamas.) This month, I learned that Alabama has been declared boll weevil free. They haven’t caught a boll weevil in the state for three consecutive years. Everybody’s really been cooperating with the eradication program, which includes trapping, release of sterile male weevils, spraying, and getting rid of the stalks the weevils overwinter in. And it paid off! Now Alabamians can ship our cotton anywhere in the world with no restrictions. Is that cool or what? I know that the weevil was important enough to crop diversification to have a monument erected to it, but I think we’ll do just fine without it.
Let’s eradicate mosquitoes next.
When we finish off the skeeters I say will wipe out the chiggers!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiggers
And the roaches!
Fire ant eradication, anyone? They plague farmers as well as home owners.
Don, I read a few years ago that the fire ants have migrated all the way to Michigan. When I was a kid, we didn’t even have them in central Georgia — I remember the dire warnings from my parents when we visited my grandmother in south Alabama. Fire ants may be like roaches: one of the few things that can survive a nuclear holocaust.
Several years ago there was a product that would wipe out fire ants but the EPA or some government entity had it removed from the market. I believe it was called Mirex.
Long ago during college (the first time) I worked as a “cotton scout” in Shelby county through the extension service in their boll weevil (and other cotton pest) program. Back then we still had weevils, but it looks like years of hard work paid off. It was also the first (and only) time I was invited to a KKK meeting. I didn’t go.
Can we get “Boll Weevil Free” on a t-shirt??? Or should it say “Free the Boll Weevil”?
Jennifer, I think a shirt that read “Alabama: Certifed Boll-Weevil Free since 2007″ would sell. I would buy one. I swear. It could have a big boll weevil with one of those red circles with a slash through it. We should suggest this to Ron Sparks.
However, there are probably already lots of boll-weevil themed t-shirts coming out of Enterprise.