Federal Bill Would Hand USDA a Mandate to Study the Pasture Mealybug

A bill filed in the U.S. House would put the federal government on the hook for studying the pasture mealybug, the sap-feeding invader that has hollowed out grazing land across Texas since it first turned up in the country last year — and for saying out loud what it would take to stop the insect.

The Combatting Pasture Mealybug Act, introduced by Rep. Monica De La Cruz of Texas's 15th District, directs the U.S. Department of Agriculture to assess the pest's economic and agricultural toll and to deliver strategies for rapid federal containment. Thirteen members signed on as original co-sponsors, nearly all of them Texans: Brian Babin, Michael Cloud, Jake Ellzey, Pat Fallon, Brandon Gill, Lance Gooden, Morgan Luttrell, Nathaniel Moran, Beth Van Duyne, Randy Weber and Roger Williams, joined by Kat Cammack of Florida and David Valadao of California.

The endorsements tell the story of how far the problem reaches past the ranch gate. The Texas & Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association, Texas Farm Bureau, Texas Citrus Mutual, Texas Vegetable Association and Texas International Produce Association all back the measure, along with the Mississippi Cattlemen's Association and Florida Farm Bureau. "With no viable eradication option for pasture mealybug, it is crucial that we ramp up our response efforts now," said TSCRA President Stephen Diebel.

That absence of a cure is the part ranchers keep coming back to. The insect feeds by sucking sap from both the above- and below-ground portions of forage grasses, and the saliva it injects is toxic to the plant. Weakened stands then fall open to secondary infections such as fusarium. The result is pasture dieback — grass that simply does not come back, even after the drought that would normally explain it lets up.

Verl Cash, natural resources manager at the King Ranch, put numbers to that in an interview with Brownfield Ag News this week. Infestations have been confirmed in multiple Texas counties along with Louisiana, Florida and Georgia, he said, and the bug is proving adaptable across ecoregions. Worse for cow-calf operations, Cash attributed 60 to 80 percent of the animal-unit reductions the ranch has made to pasture mealybugs rather than to dry weather alone. "The droughts have been legit, no doubt about it, but the pasture mealybugs are not allowing pastures to recover," he told Brownfield. Warm-season perennials take the hardest hit — bermudagrass and bahiagrass especially — with sugarcane and corn also on the list.

For anyone tracking the official response, the bill marks a change in emphasis. Texas A&M AgriLife Extension had counted 79 counties as of mid-August, and EPA granted the state a crisis exemption for the insecticide Centric 40WG as forage losses mounted toward an estimated $1 billion a year. The new legislation aims at a different lever: research coordination and a federal report rather than another emergency label. De La Cruz framed it as working "alongside Secretary Rollins to deploy effective solutions."

What it does not do is fund a treatment. A study mandate carries no chemistry with it, and the bill will need committee attention before it can move anywhere. Texas Farm Bureau, which endorsed the proposal, has been careful to describe it as preparedness rather than a solution — a way to understand the pest and identify strategies to contain it while the infestation is still measured in counties, not states.

Cash expects the map to keep growing northward. The insect has already crossed several ecoregions and habitat types, and the speed of its march through Texas suggests the Southern Plains will not be the last place ranchers learn its name.