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Whenever a pest gets into Timothy Gertson’s rice fields, he normally tries to take care of it as soon as possible.
But last year, when a horde of tiny invasive insects infested a few hundred of his acres west of Houston, he had no choice but to let them be.
“We don’t have money in the budget to kill this thing anyway, and we really don’t have anything that’s killing it,” Gertson said.
The pest, called the rice delphacid, decimated U.S. rice crops in 2025. Farmers and researchers have yet to find a way to control it, and the infestations are worsening at a time when U.S. rice growers are dealing with challenging economic conditions.
Gertson’s a fifth-generation rice farmer. He’s been farming himself since 2009. He lost a few hundred acres to the pest last year. Low prices for rice plus a high cost of necessities such as fertilizer and pesticides have made it nearly impossible to profit off the crop in 2026, he said
“We have the worst economic conditions since I started farming,” Gertson said. “It’s not even a comparison.”
‘Every single field had a presence’
The rice delphacid is native to Central and South America. Researchers believe it was likely blown north by high winds, and established a resident population in the U.S. over time.
At just a quarter-inch long when full-grown, the insect is hard to see. Even farmers who diligently monitor their fields can miss the delphacid nymphs according to Lina Bernaola, an assistant professor and rice entomologist at Texas A&M University.
“You might be scouting in an area where you don’t see the pest, but then a week later, you will see that the pest was there and already having an impact on your crop,” she said.
Rice delphacids damage the rice plant by sucking out its sap. They also spread a virus called hoja blanca, which can lower a plant’s yield or kill it.
Texas farmers first noticed the pest in 2015, but it took years for it to cause any significant challenges. By 2020, there were isolated issues with the delphacid. But in 2025, Bernaola said that infestations exploded across the rice belt.
“Pretty much every single field [in Texas] had a presence of rice delphacid,” she said.
Brian Triplett, the Texas A&M AgriLife Extension agent for Bowie County, said that this was the first year rice growers there had seen the insect.
“I can tell you that the growers experienced about a 75% loss in yield,” Triplett said. “That’s significant.”
Bowie County is in northeast Texas, bordering Arkansas. While farmers further south can grow two crops of rice each year, Bowie County growers cannot because of the climate, making the loss especially challenging.
No silver bullets
Farmers in Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi all documented rice delphacid damage last year. Two rice-growing states still have not been affected by it: California and Missouri.
“Luckily, the only rice delphacids in Missouri are sitting in a vial on my desk,” said Chase Floyd, a crop protection specialist for the University of Missouri. “I had to call my counterpart in Arkansas and say, ‘Hey, bring me some dead ones so that I can get these growers' eyes trained to what they're actually looking for.’”
After seeing the damage the delphacid did in states further south, Floyd has taken the threat seriously. He and his team spent months scouting the state’s southeast rice fields last year for the pest.
“We were burning a lot of fuel, hanging out on fields close to the state line, and any field that had been close to northeast Arkansas that had rice in it, we were sampling,” Floyd said. “We probably sampled 40 or 50 fields on a weekly basis trying to make sure that pest had not come in.”
Identifying the delphacid is one thing though. Controlling it has proven to be quite another.
So far none of the pesticides approved for rice in the U.S. have been able to tamp down a delphacid infestation. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency granted emergency approvals last year for chemical treatments Endigo ZCX and Tenchu 20SG, but they didn’t solve the problem.
“It doesn’t do a good job. It does a decent, okay job to control the adult populations of this pest,” said Bernaola, the Texas A&M entomologist. “However, these products are not silver bullets.”
Bernaola is now researching alternative pesticide options with Sam Rustom, an agronomist for Texas A&M AgriLife Extension.
“Those two products are not performing at all,” Rustom said. “They’re not working. So we’re scrambling to find replacements. We’re literally taking shots in the dark at this point and just testing whatever we can.”
Rustom says he gets calls from growers with questions about the delphacid “every day.” He wishes he had better advice to give them. But even if he had a good pesticide recommendation, some farmers may not be able to afford to spray given the current price for their crop.
Rice cost less than $10 per 100 pounds at the end of 2025, the lowest price in nearly a decade. At the same time, the cost of production for rice growers has increased.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture projects it will cost growers about $1,330 to produce one acre of rice in 2026. That’s $300 more per acre than it cost in 2020. Spraying pesticides takes up a large chunk of the cost.
Rice growers in Texas, Arkansas, Missouri and Mississippi probably wouldn’t break even in 2025 despite Federal Bridge Assistance payments from the Trump administration.
“It's very concerning when you do the math and you look at rice that's really had tight margins,” said Michael Deliberto, an agricultural policy professor at Louisiana State University. “2026 is scary … if we can't get an increase in demand. It's going to be challenging for our rice producers from a cash flow standpoint.”
There are multiple variables affecting the price of rice at the moment, including increased supply from countries such as India and Indonesia.
In 2024, India lifted its export ban on rice, which dropped prices globally according to Alvaro Durand-Morat, associate professor of agricultural economics and agribusiness at the University of Arkansas. Although this has been bad news for U.S. rice farmers, Durand-Morat thinks the abundant supply could bring down rice prices at the grocery store.
“I think consumers stand to gain,” Durand-Morat said. “We should expect prices to be quite soft.”
‘No one’s going to bear the risk’
Timothy Gertson, the Texas farmer, thought about not planting any rice at all in 2026 because of the economic risk and the delphacid. He ended up signing a contract to grow jasmine rice for a vendor on 750 acres – about half his normal acreage for the year. But he doesn’t expect to make much money from it, if any.
“I’m not paying myself really, but I am paying my employees and that, at least on our farm, is extremely important. We’ve got great guys and we want to keep them around,” Gertson said.
He’s also a little optimistic about a possible new pesticide option. Researchers, including Bernaola at Texas A&M, submitted an emergency request to the EPA to evaluate a pesticide called Courier for U.S. rice. The treatment would target young delphacids and restrict them from growing into adults, and has shown promise in trials, Bernaola said.
“The [emergency request] reflects the urgency of the situation and the need for additional tools,” Bernaola said. She fears that without more options, the insects will develop a resistance to the pesticides that are currently available.
It’s unclear whether the EPA will make a determination on Courier before rice planting begins around March. The pesticide would need to be sprayed early in the season to kill the young delphacids.
Researchers are also trying to find lines of rice that may be resistant to the insect, but that’s a long-term project.
Gertson wonders how long his neighbors will continue planting rice under current conditions.
“Prices are so low, we have nothing to control this [insect],” he said. “No one's going to bear the risk of planting. No banks are going to finance the risk of planting with this insect that has shown that it can wipe out your entire crop.”
This story was produced in partnership with Harvest Public Media, a collaboration of public media newsrooms in the Midwest and Great Plains. It reports on food systems, agriculture and rural issues.
