State boosts armyworm fight

GOVERNMENT has distributed 1,000 litres of insecticide to fight fall army worms in Lusaka district.

Lusaka district agriculture coordinator, Pharaoh Daka, told the Daily nation in an interview that the entire district has been hit by the vegetation eating pests that prefer maize.

Mr Daka said that the distribution of the pesticide was targeting farmers on the Farmer Input Support program (FISP) but that any farmer whose field was affected could benefit.

He called farmers in the district and surrounding areas not to rely only on the pesticide from Government but access the commodity through other means.

The outbreak of the fall army worm in the country was first reported in the second week of December, 2016 on the Copperbelt, followed by Eastern, Luapula, Lusaka and Central provinces.

As at 16th February, 2017, a total of 234,147 farmers, covering an area of 191,930 hectares across the country, had been affected by the outbreak of fall army worms.

In response to the outbreak, Government procured

101,804 litres of various pesticides, valued at K18 million, which were distributed to the affected farmers.

The pesticides included cypermethrin, malathion, karate and chrolopyrofos.

Government provided an additional K3 million for the purchase of work suits, gumboots, sprayers, respirators and operational funds for all the ten provinces.

The Ministry of Agriculture has been working in collaboration with the Disaster Management and Mitigation Unit, district and province administrations, Zambia National Service, the Zambia Air Force and the Zambia Correctional Services (ZCS) to fight the fall army worms.