Emergency Harare meeting warns of ‘huge’ army worm threat to African crops ‘COULD BE CATASTROPHIC’

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.

INTERNATIONAL experts at emergency UN talks in Harare warned Tuesday 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 Organization (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

Experts from 13 countries will spend three days in the Zimbabwean capital forming a battle plan to defeat the pests.

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

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 army worm, the fall army worm does not “march” along the ground in huge numbers seeking more food, the FAO said. —