The federal government is pouring millions of dollars into the fight against feral hogs — and it is considering spending even more in the years ahead. The problem has been building for decades, but new research from a team of agricultural economists finds that a recently revived federal effort offers the potential for bringing the hogs under control.

Feral swine now roam in 35 states, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The most recent population figures, from 2016, estimated that 7 million feral pigs were loose in the nation at the time — a number that may be far higher today. Feral hogs breed year-round, with each animal capable of producing up to two litters per year of four to 12 piglets per litter, and feral hog populations have been estimated to be able to double in just four months.

The scale of the damage is substantial. The USDA estimates that wild pigs cause between US$2.5 billion and $3.4 billion in property damage each year, and at least $800 million of that is destruction of crops.

The toll extends well beyond agriculture. Feral hogs spread disease to livestock, damage farm infrastructure such as fences and roads needed for agricultural production, destroy recreational parks, and cause extensive environmental damage to wildlife habitats, water quality and plant ecosystems.

Controlling them is difficult because feral hogs roam across large areas of privately owned land. If neighboring landowners do not work together, the hogs simply move rather than being killed or contained. Basic economic theory suggests landowners would wait for others to spend the time, money and energy to control the hogs — which means nobody does, and the problems grow.

An initial test

In the 2018 Farm Bill, a major piece of legislation covering wide areas of agricultural policy, Congress agreed to spend $75 million to encourage private landowners to step up together to kill feral hogs.

The program was active in selected counties in 10 hog-plagued states: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Texas. Starting in 2020, the U.S. Department of Agriculture funded private landowners' purchases of trapping equipment, on-farm trapping efforts and restoration of land the hogs had damaged.

Originally slated to end in 2023, the program was given $105 million more to spend through 2029 in the major budget and immigration package Congress passed in July 2025. Through Sept. 21, 2026, the government is accepting grant applications for the first $35 million allocation from that money.

A Farm Bill that has passed the House and is awaiting debate in the Senate would increase that funding by an additional $150 million and extend the effort through 2031.

A useful question, before all that money is spent, is how effective the first test of the program actually was.

Reducing hogs' damage to cornfields

A research team of agricultural economists at the University of Tennessee and the University of Arkansas set out to examine the program's performance. The team used federal data on crop insurance claims to compare crop damage in counties where the program was active against counties where it was not, both before and after the federal trial began.

Not all counties reported crop damage from wildlife. Among those that did, counties where the program was not operating had crop insurance claims for wildlife damage to corn that averaged 70 acres (17.5 hectares) per policy. In counties where hog eradication efforts were coordinated, however, the average claim for cornfield acres damaged from wildlife declined to 10 acres per policy — a statistically significant result that, given the scale of corn production across the study region, represents a meaningful reduction in losses.

When comparing crop insurance claims for soybeans, wheat, cotton and peanuts, however, the researchers found no difference between counties with active hog control efforts and those without.

A way forward

Corn is reportedly the crop most commonly damaged by feral swine, which could help explain why cornfields showed the only statistically significant reduction in damage.

More generally, the program's effectiveness may have been more limited because it launched during the COVID-19 pandemic, which restricted the community meetings and public outreach that could have boosted landowner participation. The fact that it was a pilot effort may also have made people reluctant to commit, fearing the program might disappear in a few years.

The study likely underestimates the program's benefits. Some farmers have crop damage that is not severe enough to warrant an insurance claim, so those numbers are excluded from the analysis. The research also did not evaluate any potential changes in noncrop damage from feral hogs, such as harm to property, livestock, recreational parks and the environment in general.

The findings indicate the hog control program can be effective and offer several ideas for improving it, both over time and with more funding. If efforts focused specifically on corn-producing counties, for instance, the program might yield more success per dollar invested. Expanding participation through additional outreach could mean more hogs are caught or killed across a wider area, amplifying the return further.

Feral hogs will be nearly impossible to eradicate completely, and the damage they cause is not going away. But the data suggests that with the right design and sustained investment, the federal government has a program that can make a real difference for America's farmers.

The research was conducted by Chris Boyer, professor and department head of agricultural and resource economics at the University of Tennessee; Aaron Smith, professor of agricultural and resource economics at the University of Tennessee; and Eunchun Park, assistant professor of agricultural economics and agribusiness at the University of Arkansas.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.