Invasive pest brings hardship to Cameroon

Armyworm has infested millions of hectares of cereal crops in Africa

Joan Makia, 45, a farmer in Tombel, a town in Cameroon’s Southwest Region, stares out at her 20-hectare maize farm, unable to hide her fear.

“This is big trouble,” she said, shaking her head.

The cause of her woes is a pest called fall armyworm, which is native to the Americas, but which is now present in all but 10 African countries.

Over the past two years it has infested millions of hectares of cereal crops in Africa, and threatens the food supply and income of more than 300 million people, the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said in March.

Facing ruin

Yesterday, the FAO warned that the pest is “increasingly growing an appetite for sorghum and millet, in addition to maize”, and could spread to northern Africa, southern Europe and the Middle East.

Many of those affected are small-scale farmers like Makia.

Although extreme weather has hurt her crops in recent years, this is the first time in two decades she has faced ruin.

“Why all this ill luck, for heaven’s sake? This means little or no income, and poverty for me and my family,” Makia said.

Fall armyworm has damaged about 80,000 hectares of farmland in Cameroon, slashing harvests of the country’s staple cereal crops by as much as three-quarters in some regions, the government said.

That means hunger and economic hardship for the 12 million people that rely on the harvests — not just farmers, but businesses, from poultry growers, pig farmers to local brewers.

The agriculture ministry said the pest had proved harder to eradicate than its African variety, and said the impact had been felt across the region.

“The damage has been rapid, affecting both farmers and business operators,” Louisette Clemence Bamzok, head of agriculture development at the agriculture ministry, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Some experts fear weather conditions, including strong winds that help the fall armyworm moth travel more, could cause further problems.

“With climate threats, the spread of the pest could intensify,” said Zachee Nzoungandembou, executive director of the Centre for Environment and Rural Transformation.