Counting cost of the deadly invasion of the armyworm
FOR decades, Frans Mashabangope and his twin sister, Elisa Masemola, have farmed and lived next door each other in Ga-Sekgopo village in Greater Letaba, Limpopo.
The siblings have been farmers for more than 50 years, selling their crops to the community, passing traders and tourists, as well as trading bags full of mealies for maize at a company nearby. But this all changed a few months ago when the fall armyworm began to viciously attack and ravage their crops.
The fall armyworm is a major issue that many in this rural farming community are dealing with on a day-to-day basis. Aside from mealies, Masemola also grows guavas, paw-paws, samp, naartjies and mangos in her garden, but since the armyworms have arrived, nothing has grown.
“There’s not even mopani worms in the trees. It’s like these big green worms have eaten them too,” she said.
For the 70-year-old twins, farming has always been their main source of income. They used to farm together on the mountainside next to the village, but as they got older, it became harder to climb every day and both decided to rather plant and sell their produce from their gardens at home.
“I feed a family of five, including grandchildren. This is how we’ve lived for so many years, growing mealies, peeling them and trading what we harvest for mealie meal. This is the only thing we know, what are we supposed to do now?” Mashabangope asked. “This creature has come out of nowhere and eaten through my beautiful crops. I don’t sleep well at night, because I can’t stop thinking about how I will feed my family,” he said, visibly shaken about the situation.
“I worry about what will happen to them if I can’t look after them, they depend on me.”
In front of the Independent Media team, the elderly man began opening and shredding some of his mealie stalks in search of the worm to show us.
At the same time his daughter, Agostina, walked out of their small home to bring her father water.
Holding a silver jug, she stood nearby and watched him carefully until he finally found two armyworms feasting on a stalk where mealies should have been growing.
He picked them up and showed them to his daughter, holding them in the palm of his hand.
For Agostina, this was the first time she had seen the pest up close and she wasn’t shy to show her disgust.
“This is it? This little worm is the thing that has caused so many problems for us?”
Her father placed them on the ground and crushed them with his shoe, determined to put an end to at least some of the creatures responsible for the destruction of his mealies.
Many of the stalks and leaves had signs that the fall armyworm had attacked, leaving holes and marks on the leaves and inside the stalks.
Conversing in their mother tongue of Sotho, the siblings recalled how this time last year, the crops in their gardens had grown well.
“By this time of the year, there should be a sweet smell of fruit in the air because the mangos and the paw-paws will be ripe, but this year there is nothing; it’s all bare,” she said, pointing to the trees in her garden which weren’t bearing any fruit.
“Any fruit that has grown this season was completely rotten,” she said, reaching out and plucking what looked like a paw-paw growing on the tree. She opened it to reveal that it was rotten right through with the seeds a sickly shade of grey instead of pitch black, which signifies whether or not this fruit is healthy.
“Look, you can’t eat this. It’s supposed to be ripe and edible by now, but this will make you sick if you have it,” Masemola said, as she dropped it.
“A lot of the food we grow and sell here, feeds the community and usually our streets are filled with bakkies of people from all over coming to buy our fruits and vegetables. Now there’s nothing and no one because we don’t have food to sell. There’s not even money to buy bread.”
For Masemola, life has not been easy. In 2006, all three of her sons died in a horrific car accident, leaving her to fend for herself financially. The armyworm has compounded the difficulties she’s been facing. “I have no income now, I have a small pension but it doesn’t pay for much. It pays the electricity, burial society and other expenses,” she said, adding that all she wanted was for her crops to start growing well again.
Mashabangope first realised something was wrong in his garden at the beginning of January when he noticed the mealies weren’t growing as they usually did.
“I check on my garden every day to see how my mealies are growing.
‘‘I started to notice that the kernels were not growing as they usually do. Something was eating them because they weren’t growing at all and they should’ve been doing well by then.”
He took a closer look and spotted the greenish worm feeding on the maize kernel and noticed the same worms on most of his crops.
“We need something to help us get rid of this problem. This has been a huge setback for me and my family. I have to ration the mealie meal I have left from the last time I traded because it’s so expensive to buy it in the shops.”
The twins implored the government to visit Ga-Sekgopo and other areas affected to understand the severity of the situation.
“They need to see what is happening here and help us. We can’t carry on like this; we have families and a community to look after,” Masemola said. “The only thing we can do now is pray that this will end,” Mashabangope added.