Spread of noxious moth destroys tomato crops across Yemen

The price of tomatoes in Yemen has jumped to YR400 ($1.86) per kilogram due to the spread of the noxious moth, tuta absoluta, which is wreaking havoc on farms and destroying crop yields.

A strategy to use pesticides to protect the crop against the moth has largely failed and caused locals to complain about the deteriorating quality of the tomato plants that are making it to consumers’ tables.

Officials expect the situation to get worse. They predict costs will continue to rise as usable crops diminish. According to the Agriculture and Irrigation Ministry, the moth’s destruction of tomato plants has cost Yemen over YR71 billion (approximately $330 million) since its appearance last autumn through the end of August.

The government has promised various financial allowances for farmers to help them offset their losses, although it is unclear if any have been delivered yet. Mohammed Al-Ghashm, the deputy minister of the Agriculture and Irrigation Ministry, said Yemen has obtained several relief packages from foreign countries. He cited a $550,000 grant from the United States Assistance and International Development (USAID) program, $120,000 donation from the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization and a $238,000 grant from the Community Livelihood Program.

Additionally, a combination of efforts from the Yemeni government, Credit Agriculture Cooperative Bank, and Agriculture and Fishing Fund, are supporting the Agriculture Ministry with a YR250 million grant (approximately $1.16 million).

In the meantime, officials are scrambling for a strategy to rid the country’s farms of the moth. The head of the research and guidance department at the Agriculture and Irrigation Ministry, Engineer Wajeeh Al-Matwakil, said the biggest problem with combating the pest is the immunity it has developed to various pesticides that have been used against it in the past. As a result, the Ministry has abandoned the ineffective strategy, which also provoked a consumer backlash.

Although it has drawn criticism from organic farming advocates, the Ministry now have a plan to distribute hormones to farmers in order to disrupt the moth’s breeding cycle. The hormones are expected to make female eggs unattractive to male moths, leaving them unfertilized.

For now farmers say they are scraping by until they receive the promised hormones and see if it works. “I used to sell tomatoes making over YR5 million (about $23,000) in one season, but now I cannot even make YR500 thousand ($2,300),” said Yahia Al-Salami, a farmer in the Qa’a Jahran valley of Dhamar governorate.

Source: www.yementimes.com

Publication date: Tue 12 Nov 2013