A Pesky Rumble: Pink Bollworms Vs. Cotton Farmers

Short Wave

NPR

Daily News, Nature, Life Sciences, Astronomy, Science, News

4.7 • 6K Ratings

🗓️ 25 January 2021

⏱️ 13 minutes

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Summary

The pink bollworm — an invasive species that plagues cotton farmers around the world — has been successfully eradicated from much of the U.S. and Mexico. Eradication campaigns rarely work, but this one did. NPR food and farming reporter Dan Charles gives us the play-by-play to how it took two concurrent approaches to eradicate this devastating pest.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.
0:04.4	Hi, everybody.
0:06.1	Maddie Sify here with NPR Food and Farming Reporter Dan Charles, hi, Dan.
0:10.8	Hi, Maddie.
0:11.8	Dan, I'm hoping you are here with more bug-related reporting.
0:15.6	It has been a while since we've tackled the invasive species beat together.
0:20.0	You've told us all about invasive lantern flies, other insect pests that eat farmers crops.
0:25.7	You've answered our listeners' questions about invasive species.
0:29.4	Yes, Maddie, and I am here with another bug story, but this one is totally different.
0:35.3	Oh my god, I'm so ready, Dan.
0:36.7	Let's go.
0:37.7	It's an incredible battle.
0:38.7	In this corner, we've got billions of little pink caterpillars, tiny things from across
0:45.3	the Pacific, love to chow down on seeds inside bowls of cotton, incredibly destructive.
0:50.9	And on the other side, in the other corner, we've got cotton farmers in the southwestern
0:56.1	U.S. They've cooked up a wild scheme to wipe out the bug and eradicate it from Arizona,
1:02.2	Texas, New Mexico, and Mexico.
1:04.6	Dan, are you sure you're not a wrestling announcer?
1:07.5	Oh, yeah.
1:08.5	Okay.
1:09.5	Okay.
1:10.5	All right.
	...

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