VIDALIA — Louisiana’s Agriculture and Forestry Commissioner has sworn to fight to keep the boll weevil eradication program funded.

Between federal and state funding sources, nearly $163 million has been spent in the last 10 years on the program dedicated to the elimination of the south’s most notorious cotton pest.

However, this year the eradication program has been earmarked for funding reduction, in part because of reduced cotton acreage and in part due to budgetary constraints.

The state funding for the program was $5 million, but for the current year it has been marked to be $3 million.

Agriculture and Forestry Commissioner Mike Strain said he has asked the legislature to set it at $4.4 million.

That’s because the program has almost achieved its goal, he said.

“We believe we are within two years of bringing the program to a control and monitor position,” Strain said.

The boll weevil is a beetle that eats cotton buds and flowers, and in the early 1900s the pest devastated the local cotton industry.

The bug continued to wreck havoc on cotton crops for decades.

“(One year), I had a beautiful cotton crop, but then the bolls never opened because of boll weevils,” District 21 Rep. Andy Anders told the Ferriday Rotary Club last week.

Since the start of the eradication program, however, cotton yield has significantly increased.

“Before the boll weevil program, the average crop produced 650 pounds of cotton per acre,” Strain said. “Now, the average is more than 1,004 pounds per acre. It’s dramatic.”

As chairman of the House agriculture committee and the representative a district that contains two of the top three cotton-producing parishes in the state for last year, Anders has pledged to join the fight to keep the program funded, and Strain is scheduled to speak before the Senate agriculture committee and joint committee on the budget this week.

“We are going to keep the funding for the program,” Strain said. “We will eradicate that little monster.”