Many farmers feel the same way.
Large fire ant mounds severely damage farm equipment during soybean and hay harvest, sting farm workers handling harvested cotton and other crops, and attack IPM workers as they scout infested fields. Fire ants, however, can be beneficial. Fire ants are voracious predators that consume large numbers of insects and other arthropods and are often the most abundant predators of plant-feeding insects in cotton, soybean, peanuts, corn, and other important agricultural crops. Research conducted by our lab in the summer of 1999 suggests that fire ants are important predators of several key pests. The abundance of fire ants foraging in the foliage of soybean and cotton plants was negatively correlated with the density of over a dozen insect pests, including some of the most serious pests of these crops.