Economic impacts of wild hogs on selected Texas agriculture operations

Abstract

At the present, wild hogs exist in Texas in free-ranging populations numbering in the millions. These populations continue to expand, and now are pervasive in almost all land resource areas of the state. Wild hogs have a noted presence in the ranching and farming industry. This presence is both biophysical and socioeconomic in nature. The hogs financially influence agriculture as both a valuable asset and expensive liability. The economic presence of this influence reflects opposing personal preferences which play an important part in opposing valuations. Biological information is available which concerns the hogs, but no research has centered specifically around the economic effects of the hog's presence upon agricultural producers. To properly perform any economic analysis of wild hog impacts on the state's agricultural producers, good data was needed and became a primary focus of this study. A second need and focus of the study was the employment of enterprise budgeting as an economic research method to discover values for the positive and negative financial effects of the hogs. These methods were used to yield sound values for the economic effects of the wild hogs on the Texas agriculture producers which were the focus of this study. This research effort demonstrates the economic effects of wild hogs on eight selected Texas agricultural producers. An intensive survey was conducted which involved gathering primary data which focused on the effects the hogs have on the respondent's operations. This data was used to construct both full and partial combination effect enterprise budgets for the respondent's agriculture enterprises. These budgets yield values for the benefits and damages that result from the hog's growing influence on landowners / managers. The values for the economic effects of the hogs are presented and discussed in an attempt to offer information and alternatives which may help efficiently manage populations of the hogs in Texas. This information can be used to evaluate biophysical and socioeconomic options for that management effort in several areas. These are the establishment of legal ownership of the hogs, legal liability, and creation of rules, regulations, and programs which increase the efficiency of management efforts.