By Michael Marks
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.
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