Zambia battles armyworms

File picture: Jim Young/Reuters

File picture: Jim Young/Reuters

Published Jan 3, 2017

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Johannesburg - Zambia must intensify its fight against an

outbreak of armyworms that’s wiping out fields of the staple corn crop, posing

a threat to the southern African nation’s food security, Vice President Inonge

Wina said.

“They are posing a big threat to food security in the

country,” she said in remarks broadcast Monday on Hot FM radio in Lusaka, the

capital. “They have come with such a force of mass destruction that has to be

faced head on. We need to put more effort into eradicating the worms.”

The black-striped caterpillars can appear between

December and May, as armies of the pest spanning miles and as dense as 1,100

per square meter (10.8 square feet) march through fields, destroying entire crops.

Armyworms and other pests had already attacked at least half of the country’s

10 provinces by last week, according to the Zambia National Farmers’ Union.

Agriculture makes up almost 10 percent of the economy, and about half of all

employed people work on farms, mainly growing corn.

Read also:  SA white corn declines on imports

Crop damage in the Copperbelt province has reached

particularly alarming levels, the farmers’ group said in reply to e-mailed

questions. Some districts there have fallen victim to not only armyworms, but

stalk borers and boll worms too. About 90,000 hectares have been affected so

far, according to the government’s Disaster Management and Mitigation Unit.

‘Wiped out’

“Some maize fields have actually been completely wiped

out,” the ZNFU said in reply to e-mailed questions December 30. “Urgent and

concerted efforts are required to keep the worms attack under control.”

Zambian President Edgar Lungu last week directed the air

force to help airlift pesticides to fight the outbreak, the country’s first

major attack since 2012, when armyworms cut the corn harvest by 11 percent. The

nation was the only one in southern Africa to produce a corn surplus last year

as drought shrivelled crops in its neighbours.

While the government fights the pest with chemicals,

Minister of National Guidance and Religious Affairs Godfridah Sumaili called on

Zambians to seek divine intervention against the worms, state-owned ZNBC

reported on its website Tuesday.

Zambia’s corn output last year climbed 9.7 percent to

2.87 million metric tons. Prices for the cereal that is ground and cooked with

water to make a thick porridge eaten with meat or fish rose by 20 percent in

December compared to 12 months earlier, according to the statistics office.

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