Wild hogs chomp and stomp their way through $90 million worth of Louisiana crops

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Feral hogs are trampling, digging and eating their way through a growing number of farms, causing more than $90 million worth of damage to Louisiana-grown rice, sugar cane and other crops each year.

Louisiana's growers reported the highest increase of wild pig activity among southern states over the past three years, according to a new study led by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. While half of farmers surveyed in the 11-state study area reported some increase, about 87% of Louisiana farmers said pig sightings and damage had grown since 2020.

That’s no surprise, said Michael Salassi, an agricultural economist with the Louisiana State University AgCenter.

“The hogs are increasing pretty fast,” he said. “Just to keep the population level, we’d need to kill 70% of them every year. Obviously, that’s not happening.”

Hunters manage to kill only a third of the state's feral hogs every year. Current estimates put the number of hogs at about 900,000, making their population larger than New Orleans, Baton Rouge and Lafayette combined.

Descendants of domesticated pigs, feral hogs cause widespread destruction in croplands, forests and coastal wetlands. They also gobble up imperiled varieties of salamanders and turtles and raid the nests of shorebirds, wild turkeys and alligators.

Feral hogs eat so many acorns that few are left for deer, ducks and turkeys during lean winter months.

Some streams in central Louisiana have had dangerous levels of bacteria from an abundance of feral hog poop.

The USDA study, published last month in the journal Agriculture, was based on surveys distributed to nearly 12,000 growers of corn, soybeans, wheat, rice, peanuts and sorghum in California, Missouri and most southern states. Across the 11 states, annual crop damage from hogs reached almost $700 million.

“Our findings suggest that the economic burden of wild pigs on producers of these crops is substantial and not limited to the direct and most identifying categories of crop damage,” such as rooting and trampling, the study said. In Louisiana, hogs are also causing more than $1 million of damage to farm fencing and equipment each year, the study found.

Hog losses for the six crops examined in the study totaled $17 million per year in Louisiana, but the full scope of damage to all agricultural products in the state was more than $91 million, according to Salassi, who led a Louisiana-focused study of hog damage in 2022.

Hardest hit were soybeans, rice, corn and sugar cane, he said.

Louisiana farmers recently suffered through a long-running drought estimated to have cost the agricultural and timber industries nearly $1.7 billion. The drought was plenty bad, but bouts of extreme weather come and go, Salassi said. Hogs cause trouble every year and will do so indefinitely.

“One hog can produce two litters every year,” he said. “So that’s one hog making 24 hogs per year. That just shows you how bad this is going to be.”

Hunting, poisoning, trapping and other control measures aren’t doing nearly enough to reduce the hogs’ numbers.

In 2020, the state began allowing licensed hunters to shoot feral hogs at night, when they’re most active. Hog hunting had been limited to daytime to curb potential illegal deer hunting.

LSU scientists recently patented a new feral hog bait that comes packed with a poison the hogs’ sensitive snouts can’t easily detect.

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