N.C. Cotton Farmers Contend With a New Pest

The farmworkers who plant and harvest thousands of acres of cotton for Z.V. Pate, Inc. are always looking for signs of trouble. 

Since the crop sprouted in May, they have regularly scanned plants at the edges of the company’s fields in North Carolina and South Carolina for the cotton jassid, a bug smaller than the head of a Q-tip. Farmers and agriculture experts say the insect, often called the two-spot cotton leafhopper for its pair of black dots and ability to leap from plant to plant, is a looming threat to cotton across the South.

Native to Asia, the cotton jassid was first spotted in southern Florida in late 2024. By the end of 2025, the pest had spread into parts of Texas and up to the border of North Carolina and Virginia. While it is usually found on cotton, it also targets okra, hibiscus, and eggplant.

Cotton jassids multiply quickly and feed on leaves, injecting their toxic saliva as they suck the plants’ sap. Their saliva causes a condition known as hopperburn, which causes the leaves to yellow and die. The cotton jassid led to a 28% loss in harvest totals in cotton it infected last year, according to data cited by the NC State Extension.

“I was kind of scared to death,” said Sam Fulton, who oversees Z.V. Pate’s operations. The insect was first found on the company’s cotton farm in North Carolina’s Scotland County in September 2025; all he knew about the bug at the time was that it wasn’t vulnerable to any of the insecticides available in the United States. 

The NC State Extension identified cotton jassids in other Eastern North Carolina counties last year, including Columbus, Johnston, Jones, Northampton, and Robeson. But the state was lucky in 2025, said Dominic Reisig, a specialist with the program and professor of entomology and plant pathology. The pest’s spread last September and October was late enough in the growing season that it didn’t damage crop yields.

The harsh winter could mean we get lucky again, Reisig said, as cotton jassids aren’t particularly hardy. The pest has yet to be spotted in North Carolina in 2026. The closest it’s been seen was in Charleston County, South Carolina, in late July. 

“It’s kind of like having a hurricane out there in the Atlantic,” Reisig said. “It could miss us. It could hit us. We don’t know.”

For farmers like Fulton, the cotton jassid is just the latest on a list of stressors heading into picking season that includes market volatility, increased production costs, and drought.

North Carolina was the country’s seventh-largest cotton producer in 2025, with a crop value of more than $242 million, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Northampton County led the state in cotton production, harvesting more than 22.5 million pounds of cotton.

Fulton said his company found a newly available insecticide called Vertento to kill the pests if they return. The only problem: It’s expensive, and each field could require up to three applications.

“Things are just kind of crazy,” Fulton said. “But the fact that they’re crazy is getting to be the new normal.”

The Cost of a New Pest

There’s a lot researchers don’t know about the cotton jassid. 

“We’re still trying to figure out pretty much everything,” said Adrian Pekarcik, an associate with the NC State Extension. He said it will take a few years to develop a comprehensive plan to manage the pest.

Reisig and Pekarcik said farmers should scout weekly for the pest, especially along the edges of fields. If a suspicious bug is found and state researchers determine it’s a cotton jassid, farmers should treat the whole field with insecticide as quickly as possible. Each insect lives up to 21 days and can lay up to 60 eggs. Cotton farmers in India have found up to 11 generations of the pest in one growing season, Pekarcik said. 

“The later you wait, the worse it’s going to be, and the quicker your plants are going to go down,” Pekarcik said.

That’s what happened in Georgia. The cotton jassid was first discovered in an okra field there in July 2025. By the end of last year, it had spread to 81 of the state’s 159 counties. About 60% of Georgia’s cotton fields had to be sprayed with insecticides, Roberts said, some multiple times.

Farmers who didn’t treat the pests fast enough saw yield losses exceeding 40%, according to a University of Georgia study of 18 locations across the state. On average, they found a 13% yield loss.

“I stood up in front of a group of growers in the middle of July, saying, ‘We found cotton jassid, but I really don’t expect it to be an economic problem,’” said Phillip Marion Roberts, an entomologist with the University of Georgia Extension. “I missed it. I was wrong.”

While a typical insecticide costs between $2 and $12 per acre, the neonicotinoid insecticides effective against the cotton jassid can cost up to $30 per acre, said Taylor Sills, executive director of the Georgia Cotton Commission. Fulton said the higher price stems in part from the new technology used to create the chemical mixture. 

The insecticides and the resources necessary to apply them added $50 in production costs per acre last year, according to Sills. Most of those farmers were already in the red.

That adds up, said Fulton: “Our total all-in cost of production on an acre of cotton is probably about $700.” 

At the same time, panic led some North Carolina farmers to needlessly spray thousands of acres with the insecticide last year, Reisig said. This is an environmental concern, as the chemicals can present risks to human health and endangered species. It can also hurt pest management down the road if insects become resistant to the chemicals, Reisig said.

“Rotating chemistries is going to be a really critical piece of managing this pest,” Pekarcik said, noting that in India, it’s become resistant to every available insecticide.

Longer term, farmers and crop scientists are developing cotton plants that are more resistant to the pest. Pekarcik said research from India shows a cotton species with hairier, less-attractive leaves tends to have fewer cotton jassids. 

Eroding Equity

Cotton’s operational costs are up in almost every growing region across the United States. North Carolina, Georgia, and other southern states saw the largest cost increase between 2024 and 2025, at over $34 per planted acre, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

“It’s a capital-intensive business,” said David Parrish, chief executive officer of the North Carolina Cotton Producers Association. “It requires a lot of inputs, whether that’s the seed itself, the fertilizer, or the crop protection inputs throughout the season.”

The costs of urea and ammonium sulfate fertilizers have climbed since the start of the U.S. war with Iran in late February. Thirteen percent of the global chemical trade, which includes fertilizers, passes through the now-closed Strait of Hormuz every year, according to the United Nations Trade and Development. 

Urea fertilizer costs in North Carolina have increased by more than 38% since the start of February, to $897.50 per ton on average, according to monthly federal market reports. A ton of ammonium sulfate costs $644.67 on average, up 7% from February.

Costs of diesel and other oil-based products have also skyrocketed. As of August 18, diesel averaged $5.33 per gallon in the state, up from $3.47 a gallon at the same time last year. 

Fulton said workers across Z.V. Pate’s farms burn a lot of diesel to till, plant, spray, and fertilize crops from the spring until the last crops are harvested in late fall. “Our job is very seasonal,” he said. “When it’s time to do the work, we have to buy the materials. We hit certain dates, and we just gotta kind of hope for the best.”

While the cost to produce cotton has increased, its price per pound has fallen. In 2021, cotton cost about $0.91 per pound. This year, it’s expected to cost $0.73, according to the latest federal figures. 

Parrish said the sale price needs to be at least $0.85 per pound for farmers to break even. 

The industry is pushing to raise prices by increasing demand. U.S. Rep. Greg Murphy, a North Carolina Republican, and Rep. Terri Sewell, an Alabama Democrat, introduced the Buying American Cotton Act of 2026 in January, which would give tax credits to U.S. manufacturers that sell products made with American-grown cotton.

“If we can hold on,” Parrish said, “I think there’s some silver linings out there.” 

The green, unopened bolls in Z.V. Pate’s Scotland County fields indicate they’ll have a good yield this year, Fulton said–as long as the crop makes it to mid-October.

“You just pray it’s going to work out,” he said.