Black-eyed peas for New Year’s? The weevils haven’t won yet

The cowpea curculio, a type of weevil, has a long, straw-like snout and a plump body. It doesn’t bite humans, at least not directly. But the critters have been the scourge of black-eyed peas and other kinds of cowpeas.

“It is a big problem: You have a terrible pest that wants to eat the same thing we want to eat,” said David Riley, a University of Georgia entomology professor.

In recent years, Riley has done all he can to study ways of killing the cowpea curculio, an insect he begrudgingly admires.

Most available pesticides are no longer particularly effective against it. So Riley suggested other options.

Bury the season’s leftover black-eyed pea waste and the living bugs embedded in it, he advised one Georgia farmer. Put them at least six feet underground.

It didn’t work. The odd-looking creatures somehow dug their way out of their deep dirt tombs, Riley said. (The distance, adjusted for size, is equivalent to a person clawing out from nearly a half mile underground.)

Burn the little devils, some thought. It turns out that’s not super effective, Riley said, because curculios often live just under the ground surface, which means the flames can’t reach them.

OK, could we shoot them with lasers? Riley asked a colleague. (Some U.S. farmers now use automated laser-laden equipment to travel fields, zapping anything identified as a weed.)

But a test seemed to show lasers won’t solve the curculio problem, Riley said. Their exoskeletons somehow were hardy enough to withstand the lasers — which can burn wood — until the normally slow-moving insects could quickly scurry out of the line of fire.

“They are little insect tanks,” Riley said.

Here’s the good news for this holiday season. Unlike the scarcity of collard greens — another New Year’s essential — at the end of 2018, no shortages in black-eyed peas are expected on grocery shelves this holiday season, spokespeople for Publix and Kroger said recently. Spot checks at three metro Atlanta Walmart, Kroger and Publix stores showed black-eyed peas available in each, primarily canned and dried versions in bags, including some being sold at discount.

It’s a big time for the little vegetable. Sales of black-eyed peas typically surge 2,000% leading up to New Year’s Day, according to Tammie Young-Ennaemba, a spokesperson for Kroger’s Atlanta division, which includes Georgia, South Carolina and Alabama.

Credit: HANDOUT

Credit: HANDOUT

Disappearing act in Georgia county

Black-eyed peas have long been a staple of the nation’s South. There are varying ideas on how they became a New Year’s tradition and how they should be cooked. Often they are served alongside or mixed in with greens (often collards), rice (as in the dish Hoppin’ John) and pork (often ham hocks).

But they don’t appear as popular as they once were. The amount of dry black-eyed peas available per capita last year in the U.S., whether through domestic production or imports, is sharply lower than it was 20 or 30 years ago, according to federal data. Dry beans — those sold unrefrigerated in bags — are mostly grown in Texas or California. Black-eyed peas grown in Georgia, meanwhile, tend to be canned, frozen or sold at fresh markets.

Black-eyed peas have lots of competition. They are one of about 50 varieties of cowpeas, also known as southern peas, that are commercially grown in the U.S.

The value of cowpea production in Georgia in 2021 was the lowest in at least 16 years, according to the latest figures from the University of Georgia’s Center for Agribusiness and Economic Development. The crop’s value sank to less than half what it was just six years earlier.

Riley blames the curculio for much of the drop off.

Whenever farmers ramp up production, the curculios soon boom, too. Colquitt County was Georgia’s biggest producer of cowpeas in 2015, harvesting nearly 1,800 acres. Then the insects struck hard. Frustrated local farmers gave up on the crop. Just two acres of cowpeas were harvested in the south Georgia county six years later.

Declines have been underway nationally. Fifteen thousand acres of cowpeas were harvested in the U.S. in 2017, according to the last federal agriculture census. That was half the acreage from 20 years earlier.

Contrast that with the millions of U.S. acres of cowpeas harvested annually during the 1930s. Early in the last century, cowpeas were planted on more acres than soybeans, and were used as both feed for animals and food for people, Riley said. But soon soybeans surged and cowpeas faltered. Soybeans could be more easily harvested mechanically in many cases. And cowpeas, while drought resistant, were being ravaged by the curculios.

Riley hasn’t given up on stopping the pest. He’s determined why some south Georgia growers have had some success waiting to plant black-eyed peas in the late summer rather than the spring. It turns the weevils hibernate over the winter, and are more likely to starve to death if they can’t find enough to eat after they arise in the spring.

And a new insecticide shows promise in keeping down curculios, though it is not yet labeled for use on cowpea plants, he said. Riley is also working with a graduate student who is testing different varieties of cowpeas that might be bred to better resist the weevils.

‘Will put you out of business’

In the meantime, growers are wary of the insects.

“It will put you out of business if you don’t figure it out,” said Patrick Shivers, a fourth-generation farmer from Fort Gaines in southwest Georgia. “You can’t relent. You have to stay on them the whole time.”

For five years he’s been growing different varieties of cowpeas. He eventually steered away from growing black-eyed peas.

Unlike some bush versions of cowpeas, black-eyed peas have to be picked by hand, Shivers said, and workers are difficult to find. Also, he said, other kinds of cowpeas such as cream peas and pink eye purple hulls are far more popular in south Georgia any time other than New Year’s Day.

Meanwhile, Riley, who has spent years taking on the curculios, said he expects to be eating black-eyed peas this New Year’s Day. But it will be a special day for another reason: He’s retiring then and becoming an emeritus professor. Which he said will give him enough time to work on a book about crop-specific pest management for vegetables. He’s expecting to do an entire chapter on cowpeas.

Wish him luck.