Armyworms: Why you may not have enough maize to eat this season

Lovers of maize, including stakeholders in the poultry and agriculture business are probably in for a tough time this year. TADE MAKINDE and COLLINS NNABUIFE write that the overall impact may not help Nigerians to feed well.

JUST when Nigerians were looking forward to having more varieties of foodstuffs to choose from, with maize harvest just coming in and the hope of a drop in the prices of agri-products, a phenomenon is threatening to dash this hope. This threat to Nigeria’s maize output, currently put at 10.5 million tons, is called armyworm.

The dangerous pest is believed to have found its way into Nigeria from Benin Republic through Oyo State. Already, there is a gap of five million tons of maize with demand standing at 15.5 million tons.

According to farmers and scientists, armyworms are produced by butterflies which invade farms at nights to lay hundreds of thousands of eggs which after about five to 10 days hatch into caterpillars that devour every green or yellow plant, including, as the case is this season, maize. Armyworms are very active at night and hide in plants and under garden debris during the day.

However, its name is a bit misleading, because they are not actually worms, but hungry caterpillars that eat leaves, stalks and crops in a feeding frenzy before turning into a moth.

According to a scientist, Mrs O. Odeyemi at the Institute of Agricultural Research and Training (IAR&T), Ibadan, Oyo State, the armyworms are destructive and of different shades and colours.

“Markings on newly hatched caterpillars are usually hard to distinguish, but older larvae have distinctive stripes that run the entire length of the body. Some armyworms are brown with yellow stripes, while some are green with light stripes. Adults are gray, mottled moths with a small white dot in the center of each forewing and dark margins on the hind wings.

“An armyworm burrows right into the stem of maize plants, concealing itself from view and preventing farmers from spotting the problem early. They are also responsive to favorable conditions. Their eggs are laid in fluffy masses on crowns of seedlings and on leaves of older plants,” he said.

The Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Chief Audu Ogbeh, who announced the outbreak of the pest, said it is currently ravaging farms and also poses threat to the poultry industry. A large percentage of poultry feeds is made up of maize. Therefore, any issue that affects maize will automatically result in the skyrocketing of prices of poultry products.

“If we don’t deal with it, maize production may become almost impossible here. The impact of shortage of maize has become severe in poultry, and for a country facing food shortage, especially in the North-East, we will not allow it to continue.”

Controlling the menace

When Sunday Tribune spoke with the Desk Officer of Maize Value Chain in the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, Mr Adeleke Mufutau, he said the Chief Ogbeh had mandated the regional directors to find solution to the pest, adding that government had immediately embarked on training and sensitisation of farmers to how the pest operates and how to apply chemical to control it.

He further revealed that the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) is currently working on the improved variety of maize which will be resistant to armyworm.

“It is no longer a maize issue again, because the pest is also attacking grasses that are kept for livestock feeding and is also attacking other crops too. We are on top of the situation to make sure that the way Tuta Absoluta was contained in tomato, with the help of donor agencies, this is the way we are going to do it with armyworms,” Muftau said.

An Osun State-based farmer Mr Ademola Fasehun, told Sunday Tribune that he had already devised some methods of dealing with the pest. He listed other methods of controlling the pests to include digging trenches, employing natural predators like birds, to eat the worms or even burning the crops.

“I prefer them (natural predators) to pesticides, but unfortunately, these natural predators are being killed by the very pesticides that some farmers apply to kill the armyworms. It has just started. Even those countries not currently affected should prepare themselves for possible infestations. We cannot eradicate it, but we can find ways of managing it” he said.

Containing the pest is expected to cost the government billions of naira. The Deputy Director of Horticulture at the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development , Mr Mike Kanu, during a presentation recently said that a total of N2.98 billion will be needed to contain the pest for 700,000 hectares across the country.

Counting  losses already…

The Director-General of Poultry Association of Nigeria (PAN), Mr Onallo Akpagu, said the issue of armyworm is going to affect the poultry industry in the sense that maize is used to produce feed which the birds consume. According to him, if there is low supply of maize, definitely, the cost of feed will increase which will in turn increase the prices of poultry products:  eggs and the meat.

An animal breeder, Isa Tafida,          said the infestation is not limited to maize and other crops; it is also affecting cattle, especially the ones that ate the grass inhabited the pest. “Everybody knows that whatever affects grass will definitely affect cattle. We have a very high mortality this year, so we are calling the attention of the government to find out how many cattle died from January to May this year,” Tafida explained, corroborating Fasehun’s claim that farmers had already started fighting the armyworm. According to him, it has been discovered that the worm survives when there is less rainfall, stressing that when there is heavy rainfall, the pests will die naturally without the use of chemicals.

In Jigawa State, the armyworms have reduced the maize yield for farmers. Before the outbreak of the pest, farmers were harvesting 10 to 15 bags from their farms, but following the outbreak, the number dropped to five to 6 six bags.

“I get up to 10 to 15 bags of maize, but because of the outbreak of the armyworm, it has dropped to 5 to 6 bags of maize. There are still armyworms in the farms, but because we have harvested, they appeared not to be present. But immediately we commence planting, they will resurface,” said Isa Abubakar, a farmer.

Nigerians who love maize may not eat it to their satisfaction this year. Even those selling the staple may not have much money to gain. A corn vendor, Madam Olaiya Aderoju, at Molete area of Ibadan said “most of the corn I have been buying to boil and sell have been infested. Customers hardly pay much for such. For as little as N20, they still don’t buy it. They would rather pay N50 for non-infested maize.”

Mr Fasehun also confirmed that even farmers are already counting their losses. He narrated how  he arrived in his Iloko-Ijesa farm to see the devastation wrought by armyworms and nearly collapsed. It was the first time he was experiencing such extensive pest invasion on his farm.

“Out of 10 acres of cultivated maize farm, almost five have been eaten by these worms. I am in trouble. I am already planning on replanting maize again so that I can meet the August and September market. This is already a loss for me,” he lamented.

Hunger in the land

As a result of high price of food items, Most Nigerians are already going hungry and devising new methods to meet their food needs. But with the rampaging “army”, many people may be in for harder times, especially when the full impact of the invasion of farms and havocs becomes manifest.