‘Find lasting solution to army worms’
A KABWE-BASED farmer has appealed to the government to find a lasting solution to the army worms that have continued wreaking havoc in the country in the last three farming seasons affecting crop production.
Mr Maxwell Hiboompo of the Mpima Dairy Farm area said farmers countrywide had been losing a lot of resources in terms of farming inputs and money on chemicals to mitigate the effect of the armyworms apart from resources spent on land preparation, buying of seed and fertiliser.
He urged Government through the Ministry of Agriculture to come up with a more effective chemical that would whip out the armyworms so that farmers could once again maximise their crop production.
“Armyworms is a difficult issue because we have not come with a real chemical which can whip out armyworms, I am saying so because if I spray today worms will be killed but not all of them. “We need a chemical which can be used to spray in the field this year so that next season we don’t experience this problem, we are losing a lot,” said Mr. Hiboompo.
Mr. Hiboompo is one of the farmers who have been benefitting from the One Acre Fund programme of providing smallholder farmers with financing, a service offered on credit and training needed to improve crop production.
He said since joining the programme in the 2017/2018 farming season, his crop production had improved and had even managed to build a house, some farming implements and sent his children to school.
Mr. Hiboompo managed to produce about 86 bags of fertilizer, both D-compound and Urea from his 15 hectares maize field during this year’s farming season.
He said if the rain continues up to March, he expects to harvest about 1,200 bags of maize for the 2019/2020 farming season.
Mr. Hiboompo is chairperson of the 11-member Lusumpuko Farm group in Kizito area in the Mpima Dairy farm which has about 27 groups under the care of One Acre Fund.
The fund has since 2006 been providing services to over 19,000 farmers in Zambia to supplement government’s efforts in improving the agricultural sector.