Fall Armyworm Confirmed In 44 African Nations; South American Invasives Eat 80 Different Food Crops
Early one morning in April 2017, Anne Anyole found strange caterpillars feeding on her maize crop. At first she thought it was stalk borer, a pest familiar to farmers in western Kenya’s Kakamega county, especially when the weather is dry. Maize is usually planted in March during the onset of the long rains that usually continue into August. But in 2017, it was still dry until early April, and the maize was still low to the ground, barely knee height.
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“I realized that the damage to the crops was increasing and more devastating than ever,” Anyole said. That year, farmers across Kakamega county turned desperately to every alternative, including spraying their crops with laundry detergent and painstakingly picking worms off their crops by hand and crushing them, but nothing proved effective.
“Since 2017, I have been harvesting low yields,” Anyole says. “I cannot get surplus to sell and pay school fees for my kids as it is my main source of income.” Where she says she would have harvested 800 kilograms (1,760 pounds) of maize after each of Kenya’s two growing seasons, her fields have yielded barely 250 kilos (550 pounds) per season since the armyworm appeared.
FAW made its first appearance in Africa in Nigeria in 2016. Scientists have not yet established how it reached the continent from Latin America, but once it arrived, it spread rapidly. S. frugiperda moths can migrate more than 500 kilometers (300 miles) before mating and laying their eggs — and can fly much longer distances with favorable winds. In an alarmingly short span of time, the pest spread from West Africa to Southern Africa and then into East Africa. It has now been reported in 44 countries with infestations affecting 80 different crops.
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https://news.mongabay.com/2019/10/a-scramble-for-solutions-as-fall-armyworm-infestation-sweeps-africa/
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