International Journal of Agriculture Natural Farming Research

Counting the Cost of the New World Screwworm: Economic Exposure of Black Cattle Producers and Black Households in Texas

Gbolahan Solomon Osho¹, Kidane Yitbarek²

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Abstract

The reintroduction of the New World screwworm (NWS, Cochliomyia hominivorax) into Texas in June 2026, the first confirmed cases in the state since 1966, marks the return of a livestock parasite whose earlier presence cost the Texas economy hundreds of millions of dollars a year before its eradication. This paper develops a distributional economic assessment of a renewed NWS outbreak and asks who in Texas is most exposed to its costs. Drawing on USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service loss estimates, the 2022 Census of Agriculture, USDA Economic Research Service price and food-security data, and Texas A&M AgriLife sector analyses, the paper reports three findings. First, a 1976-scale outbreak would, after inflation adjustment, impose roughly $732 million in direct losses on Texas livestock producers and about $1.8 billion on the broader state economy. In comparison, contemporary sector models estimate potential losses to the cattle industry at nearly $2.1 billion. Second, Black producers are structurally over-exposed within that aggregate. Texas is home to more Black producers (11, 511) than any other state. Nearly half of Black-operated farms nationally specialize in cattle. These operations are disproportionately small and capital-constrained, and a large share are encumbered by heirs’ property arrangements that have long impeded access to USDA credit and disaster relief. Third, on the demand side, Black Texas households, which already experience food-insecurity rates more than double those of white households, face additional strain from beef price increases that have pushed retail beef to record highs at a time when the U.S. cattle herd is at its lowest level in three-quarters of a century. The paper concludes that a single statewide loss figure hides a sharply uneven incidence, and that an effective NWS response should write explicit equity provisions into surveillance, treatment subsidy, and disaster-relief design.

Keywords: New World screwwormlivestock economicsBlack farmersbeef supply chainfood insecurityagricultural policyTexasdistributional impactheirs’ property

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Licensed under CC BY 4.0.