State ag director illustrates challenges in fighting pests

As Louisiana Department of Agriculture and Forestry commissioner, Michael Strain is acutely aware of when his state’s signature products are under threat. Whether that threat is biological or legal. 

Right now, he’s facing down the Australian pasture mealybug, which is already in 25% of Texas and moving into Louisiana, where its fondness for cane sugar threatens to light up the invasive insect’s population like a phone bank at a telethon.

“When you talk about cane sugar, for many parishes, this is the, THE economy,” he said. “We found out we had nothing under the law to treat it. Nothing.”

But an exemption from the Environmental Protection Agency allowed the use of a new insecticide, which has thus far shown signs of success. 

“We are three days into this battle,” he said. “What is this one little monster mean? $1.6 billion.

“These rules and these regulations, they are not suggestions. We’re telling our farmers, ‘You can use these products, but you better follow the label to the T.’

Strain told the Agriculture and Rural Affairs Steering Committee Friday that the next farm bill must restate the preeminence of the EPA to deal with restricted use chemicals.

Learn more

2026 NACo Annual Conference & Exposition

“The law of the land is the labels on the containers,” he said. “As administrators, you follow it.”

But advancing the farm bill meant removing that restatement. 

“Without this, what would have happened, that each individual state commissioner, as in I, would have had the responsibility and the ability to set the rules for every restricted use chemical. Now, that’s not good. What do we have to have across the United States of agriculture and industry? Uniformity. That’s the battle, right? That’s what the commerce clause of the constitution means.” 

He’s also worried about screw worms, which showed up in Louisiana on June 3 and numbered 35 cases on July 16. The overpopulation of feral swine are also a concern, though an injectable sterilization solution shows some promise. 

For an audience largely composed of out-of-staters, he illustrated his state’s recent agricultural challenges with an example they’d understand.

Work permit authorization challenges, caused in part by the federal government shutdown, left the crawfish industry roughly 2,000 workers short before those permits could be processed.

“You know what that cost us? $100 million,” he said. “Crawfish is an integral part of our economy. We raise 400,000 acres of rice, 360,000 acres of crawfish.”

Thought the crawfish etouffee isn’t close to running out for Annual Conference attendees, they learned one way it could, someday.