U.S. Department of Agriculture: Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service
United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications
Document Type
Article
Date of this Version
2024
Citation
MDPI Agriculture (January 20, 2024) 14: 153
doi: 0.3390/agriculture14010153
Academic editors: Pedro A. Casquero and Wenjiao Shi
Abstract
Wild pigs (Sus scrofa) cause damage to agricultural crops in their native range as well asin the portions of the globe where they have been introduced. In the US, states with the highest introduced wild pig populations are Alabama, Arkansas, California, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Texas. The present study summarizes thefirst survey-based effort to value the full extent of wild pig damage to producers of six crops in these 11 US states. The survey was distributed by the USDA National Agricultural Statistical Service in the summer of 2022 to a sample of 11,495 producers of corn (Zea mays), soybeans (Glycine max), wheat (Triticum spp.), rice (Oryza sativa), peanuts (Arachis hypogaea), and sorghum (Sorghum bicolor) in these 11 states. Our findings suggest that the economic burden of wild pigs on producers of these crops is substantial and not limited to the direct and most identifiable categories of crop damage (i.e. production value lost due to depredation, trampling, and rooting). We estimate that the annual cost to producers of these 6 crops in the surveyed states in 2021 was almost USD 700 million.
Comments
United States government work