24
Feb
Southern Africa: Crop-eating pests plague southern African farmers
Southern Africa: The rainy season, always welcome in often dry southern Africa, has brought with it favourable breeding conditions for army worms and red locusts. The crop-eating pests are contributing to the woes of subsistence farmers already struggling to recover from setbacks in the last farming cycle.
In Zimbabwe, where the World Food Programme (WFP) estimates that 2.2 million people now require food assistance, more than 800 hectares of cereal grain crops and 300 hectares of pasture have been destroyed by outbreaks of army worms.
