Embu farmer Anthony Gitonga, 30, watched in dismay as his four-acre farm in Manyatta was attacked by fall armyworms and other pests last year.
He sought the help of the Pest Risk Information Service (Prise) plant doctors. “The doctors took and tested samples of my maize crops, after which they recommended crop rotation.” The solution helped him change his fortunes.
Gitonga says in 2013, he quit his dairy farming job at a local company, where he used to earn Sh18,000 a month, and went into farming. This increased his earnings to Sh30,000 a month. And it was all a smooth ride until the armyworms experience.
He shared his journey during a Plantwise Clinic session and the pilot launch of The Prise project at Manyatta. Gitonga alongside other farmers came to consult local plant health extension officers, also known as plant doctors.
The consultation happens every Thursday. Alongside maize, Gitonga also farms coffee, sukuma wiki, cabbage, and also deals with poultry.
Plant doctor David Gitari said they came to the plant clinic at 10am and operated until 4pm. Apart from recommending natural ways to deal with fall armyworms, the plant doctors visit the farms to assess the problem, and most of the time they recommend crop rotation.
“We also recommend the push and pull method, which involves introducing another crop to pull unwanted ones (crops). We hold barazas to discuss relevant issues with our farmers,” he said.
OTHER SOLUTIONS
To control the spread of fall armyworms, the plant doctors recommend methods such as handpicking, crushing the eggs, and maintaining field cleanliness to avoid harbouring pests.
The Prise project is being reinforced by the Centre for Agriculture and Biosciences International (Cabi), a UK-based organisation.
The Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organisation (Kalro) is one of the many Prise project partners, whose main duty is to collect data on pests so as to place traps in the field to help farmers detect warning signs.
Kalro has a trial farm in their own field, and has patterned with two local farmers, including Winifred Murithi, who gets visited by three farmers a week to learn about pest control. Murithi mainly farms maize on her third of an acre farm.
“I use six pest traps in my farm. Before starting to use the traps, I used to take worms lightly because I didn’t know they were different,” she said.
Because of the prevalence of fall army worms, last season Murithi harvested only one debe. This season, she expects to get five or six bags. “To control the fall army worms, last season, before I got the traps, I spent around Sh700 to purchase relevant chemicals, and Sh1,200 for spraying labour.”
Dr Johnson Nyasani, the agricultural entomologist at Kalro, said they are conducting the pilot study on maize, beans and tomatoes.
“We are trying to predict when and where a particular life stage is likely to occur so that we can warn the farmers in time, and they can have an idea of what to look for; and the same warning goes to the plant doctors within a particular plant clinic,” he said.
During 2018, the first year of the Prise project (set to run for five years), the focus is on maize, beans and tomatoes — and the pests that attack those particular crops.
This year, a new crop and a corresponding pest will be added. Dr Nyasani said the project will help farmers identify the pest affecting their crops, which leads to proper management, thus improving food security.
Cabi has a close research collaboration with Kalro’s Food Crops Research Institute, Embu Branch. Cabi knowledge management director Cambria Finegold said the project uses earth observation data from multiple satellites in space along with field observation from farmers and extension officers to provide alerts.
This way, they know what stage a key pest like a fall armyworm is at, at any time, and warn farmers to take action.
“We are also working with Kalro to test the crops we grow here. Kalro research on the model we use to ensure it is as accurate as possible,” Finegold said, adding that the model they focus on mostly is the one involving the lifecycle of the pest.
The Prise project is currently working in Kenya, Ghana and Zambia, with the possibility of adding two or three more countries from sub-Saharan Africa.
Finegold concludes that predicting where exactly a pest goes to when it moves to a new country is a different type of problem, but an important one.