100,000 acres in 1959, 1960, and 1961. During this interval, the control agencies must have
found news from Long Is land dis quieting. The gyps y moth had reappea red the re in numbe rs.
The expens ive s praying operation that had cos t the Departme nt dea rly in public confidence and
good will—the ope ration that was intended to wipe out the gyps y moth for ever—had in reality
accomplis hed nothi ng at all....
Meanwhile, the Department’s Plant Pes t Control me n had te mporarily forgotte n gyps y moths ,
for they had been bus y launching an even more a mbitious progra m in the South. T he word
‘eradication’ still came easily from the Department’s mime ograph machines ; this time the pres s
releases were promising the eradication of the fire ant. The fire ant, an ins ect named for its
fiery s ting, s eems to have entered the United States from South Ame rica by way of the port of
Mobile, Alabama, where it was discovered shortly after the end of the First World War. By 1928
it had s pread into the s uburbs of Mobile and thereafte r continued an invas ion that has now
carried it into mos t of the s outhe rn s tates. During mos t of the forty-odd years since its arrival in
the United States the fire ant s eems to have attracted little attention. The states where it was
mos t abundant cons idered it a nuis ance, chiefly becaus e it builds large nes ts or mounds a foot
or more high. Thes e may hamper the operation of farm machinery. But only two states listed it
a mong t hei r 20 mos t important ins ect pes ts , and thes e placed it near the bottom of the lis t. No
official or private concern seems to have been felt about the fire ant as a menace to crops or
lives tock. With the developme nt of chemicals of broad lethal powers , there came a s udden
change in the official attitude toward the fire ant. In 1957 the United States Departme nt of
Agriculture launc hed one of the mos t re markable publicity campaigns in its his tory. The fire ant
suddenly became the target of a barrage of government releases, motion pictures, and
government-inspired stories portraying it as a despoiler of southern agriculture and a killer of
birds, livestock, and man. A mighty campaign was announced, in which the fe deral government
in cooperation with the afflicted states would ultimately treat some 20,000,000 acres in nine
s outhern s tates. ‘United States pes ticide makers appear to have tapped a s ales bonanza in the
increas ing numbers of broad-scale pest elimination progra ms conducte d by the U.S.
Department of Agriculture,’ cheerfully reporte d one trade journal in 1958, as the fire ant
prog ram got un der way.
Never has any pes ticide program been s o thoroughly and des ervedly damne d by practically
everyone except the beneficiaries of this ‘sales bonanza’. It is an outstanding example of an ill-
conceived, badly executed, and thoroughly detrimental experiment in the mass control of
insects, an experiment so expensive in dollars, in destruction of animal life, and in los s of public
confidence in the Agriculture Departme nt that it is incomprehe ns ible that any funds s hould s till
be devote d to it.
Congres s ional s upport of the project was initially won by repres entations that were later
dis credited. The fire ant was pictured as a s erious threat to s outhern agriculture through
des truction of crops and to wildlife becaus e of attacks on the young of ground-nes ting birds. Its
sting was said to make it a serious menace to human health. Jus t how s ound we re thes e clai ms?
The s tatements made by Departme nt witnes s es s eeking appropriations were not in accord with
thos e contained in key publications of the Agriculture Departme nt. The 1957 bulletin Insecticide
Recommendations...for the Control of Insects Attacking Crops and Livestock did not s o much as
mention the fire ant—an extraordinary omission if the Department believes its own
propaganda. Moreover, its encyclopedic Yearbook for 1952, which was devoted to ins ects ,
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