Army worm not going anywhere, experts say
THE Fall Army Worm, which attacks more than 80 different plant species, is here to stay.
So heard experts attending a technical meeting convened by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN (FAO) in Nairobi this weekend, to discuss an infestation in southern Africa.
The pest, native to South and Central America, was first detected in South Africa in January last year.
It had spread from Nigeria to several other West African countries and to Central Africa by April 2016.
The Fall Army Worm attacks more than 80 different plant species, including maize, a major food staple in sub-Saharan Africa on which more than 200 million people depend.
Director of the Global Maize Programme at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre, BM Prasanna said the pest is here to stay.
“We cannot eliminate the pest from Africa – now that it is here, it will stay, but we can provide support to farmers and provide options to manage their crops. The truly frightening risk of the Fall Army Worm to food security in Africa must be recognised and tackled with a holistic integrated pest management programme,” Prasanna said.
Roger Day, sanitary and phytosanitary co-ordinator at the Centre for Agricultural and Biosciences International (Cabi), told experts a conservative estimate of the loss of Africa’s maize due to the worm could cost the continent R40 billion in the coming year.
Joe De Vries, vice-president for programme development and innovation at the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (Agra), said: “Fall Army Worm is a very recently-introduced pest in Africa and even the experts are unsure what its long-term impact will be.
“We agreed on the urgency of enabling national plant protection groups to work with farmers in controlling damage on their farms.
“Longer-term, though, only collaborative efforts between agencies can provide a solution.”