Harare meeting warns of ‘huge’ army worm threat

Harare, Tuesday

International experts at emergency UN talks in Harare warned today that crop-eating army worm caterpillars posed a serious threat to food supplies across several African countries.

The outbreak has already caused damage to staple crops in Zambia, Zimbabwe, South Africa and Ghana, with reports also suggesting Malawi, Mozambique and Namibia are affected.

Experts say it appears to be the first time that the “fall army worm” species from the Americas has devastated crops in Africa. David Phiri, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) coordinator for southern Africa, told delegates that the army worm posed “a huge threat to food security.”

“We need to use our collective capacities to put up systems that will strengthen the resilience of our farmers,” he said as talks opened. “The pest appears to be moving into the region in a north to south trajectory.”

The first fall army worms were seen in Nigeria and Togo last year, with one theory saying that they arrived in Africa on commercial flights from South America or in plants imported from the region.

The caterpillars eat maize, wheat, millet and rice — key food sources in southern and eastern Africa, where many areas are already struggling with shortages after years of severe drought. Experts from 13 countries will spend three days in the Zimbabwean capital forming a battle plan to defeat the pests.

The armyworm is “spreading rapidly” in Africa and could even threaten farming worldwide, the Centre for Agriculture and Bioscience International (CABI) warned.

It said maize is particularly vulnerable to the larvae, which attack the crop’s growing points and burrow into the cobs. Unlike the native African armyworm, the fall army worm does not “march” along the ground in huge numbers seeking more food, the FAO said. The fall armyworm also attacks cotton, soybean, potato and tobacco fields.

Chemical pesticides can be effective, but fall army worms have developed resistance in their native Americas. “You use different methods. One of them is pesticides, another is to use biological control.

Another is to use natural control, like digging trenches around the farm (or) natural predators, like birds,” Phiri said before the meeting began.

“It’s very difficult to control it, so they will have to use different methods — including sometimes burning the crops.” Zimbabwe’s deputy agriculture minister Davis Marapira confirmed that the pest had been detected in all of the country’s 10 provinces. —AFP

The post Harare meeting warns of ‘huge’ army worm threat appeared first on Mediamax Network Limited.