Kentucky's Office of the State Entomologist History

It is now known that the majority of serious insect pests that occur in the United States are of foreign origin. About 90% of these introduced pests have come in on shipments of plants, seeds or plant products. Many pests had already gained entrance before any cooperative or legal action could be taken to curb the introduction and spread of foreign pests, because there was as yet an insufficient body of organized professional entomologists to deal with the problem. The establishment of land-grant colleges by the enactment of the Morrill Act in the 1860's, and the establishment of State experiment stations by enactment of the Hatch Act in 1887 gave impetus to the emergence of economic entomology as a scientific profession. Entomologists were among the first to be hired by experiment stations, and they worked more or less independently to solve their state's insect problems. However, an awareness grew of the threat from introduced insect pests. Agricultural interests in California had already become alarmed by this threat because of the number of such pests in their state, and the California State Legislature enacted laws in 1881 to prevent the introduction of plant pests. During the next 15 years several other states followed suit with legislation, commonly referred to as nursery laws, primarily because of the seriousness of the San Jose scale which was spreading rapidly throughout the country. States differed greatly in their legislation and methods for how to deal with the problem, so in 1897, S. A. Forbes, the Illinois State Entomologist, called a meeting of official entomologists from surrounding states to discuss this new pest and means of alleviating it. The group at this meeting felt that both state and federal legislation was imperative, and endorsed a call for a national convention.

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