Bashira Chowdhury and Jim Giesen (Mississippi State University), "Sweating the Small Stuff: How Histories from Boll Weevil Logbooks and Collections Define Today’s Insects"
In 1969, the USDA launched a national campaign to eradicate the boll weevil, a major scourge of cotton farms across the Southeast US. The campaign started with a pilot experiment in Southern Mississippi to demonstrate that thetechnology to eradicate boll weevils already existed and required state and federal authorities to coordinate on when and where to spray insecticides. In 1973, Congress passed a Farm Bill mandating boll weevil eradication, ensuring cotton farms across the United States had to comply with federal efforts, and by 1978, the USDA started its multi-decade march to push boll weevils from Virginia and North Carolina to the US-Mexico border.
The USDA, and most cotton growers, consider the campaign a success. As of 2000, boll weevils were hard to find in the Cotton South. However, the program’s effect on the insect ecosystems of the region is unknown. As a part of its legacy, the campaign left behind volumes of archival material, scientific data, and insect specimens that may help us better understand how beneficial insects weathered these federally coordinated onslaughts of insecticides. We use these data and specimens to piece together histories about Geocoris and Nabis, omnivorous predators of a variety of crop pests. Experts today view both species as critical components of modern pest management. By documenting their histories, we shed light on two interwoven stories: how decisions by farmers, scientists, and policy makers shaped insectdiversity during the campaign, and how the legacy of these decisions shape ambitions to define and employ beneficial insects today. Together, this allows a new understanding of how efforts to advance a post-insecticide world may be delivered through beneficial services from insects.