Feral hog control pencils out as a block: corn claims of 10 acres versus 70

A team of agricultural economists at the University of Tennessee and the University of Arkansas has assessed the first run of the federal feral swine control program and found that among counties reporting wildlife crop damage, corn insurance claims averaged 10 acres per policy where the program operated and 70 acres per policy where it did not ^[1][2][3][4]. The timing matters: Congress put another $105 million behind the effort through 2029 in the budget and immigration package passed in July 2025, and a Farm Bill that has cleared the House would add $150 million and extend it through 2031 ^[5][6].

The gap between those two numbers is 60 acres per policy, or roughly 86 percent lower in program counties, and the researchers report it as statistically significant ^[1][4]. It is also the only significant result they found. Claims for soybeans, wheat, cotton and peanuts showed no difference between program and non-program counties ^[7]. Corn is reportedly the crop most often damaged by feral swine, which the authors offer as the likely explanation for the single-crop finding ^[8].

The reason to read this as a coordination result rather than a spending result sits in the problem's structure. Feral hogs range across large tracts of privately owned land, and if neighbouring landowners do not act together, the animals relocate instead of being killed or contained ^[9]. The authors put the standard free-rider logic plainly: each landowner has an incentive to wait for someone else to spend the time and money, so nobody spends it and the damage compounds ^[10]. Money handed to an isolated farm buys a trap and moves the pigs next door. Money handed to a contiguous block of farms removes them from the block.

That is what the 2018 Farm Bill bought with $75 million: a pilot in selected counties across ten states, Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Texas ^[11][12]. From 2020, USDA paid for landowners' trapping equipment, on-farm trapping and restoration of damaged land ^[13]. Note the unit of treatment in the study is the county, not the farm.

The scale of the underlying problem argues for coverage too. Feral swine are established in 35 states, and the most recent population estimate, from 2016, put 7 million animals loose nationally ^[14][15]. They breed year-round with up to two litters of four to 12 piglets each, which is 8 to 24 animals per sow per year, and populations have been estimated to be capable of doubling in four months ^[16][2][17]. USDA puts annual property damage at $2.5 billion to $3.4 billion, of which at least $800 million is crop destruction, meaning crops account for roughly a quarter to a third of the total ^[18][19][3]. The rest is livestock disease, fences and farm roads, parks and habitat, water quality and plant ecosystems ^[20].

Two caveats the authors raise are worth keeping. The pilot launched during the COVID-19 pandemic, which suppressed the community meetings and outreach that drive landowner sign-up, and its status as a pilot may have made people reluctant to commit to something that could disappear ^[21][22]. The authors say their study likely underestimates the program's benefits ^[23]. Separately, the outcome measure is insurance claims for wildlife damage, not hog damage specifically ^[4].

Watch the Senate's handling of the Farm Bill's $150 million, and watch whether the first $35 million allocation, open for grant applications through Sept. 21, 2026, is awarded in contiguous county blocks or scattered across willing individual applicants ^[6][24]. The second pattern would test the coordination claim by breaking it.