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Obert Chifamba-Agri-Insight
LAST week stakeholders in the livestock sector, including the Government, descended on Venice dip tank in Mhondoro-Ngezi for the official launch of the “War on January disease”.
The occasion was necessitated by the resurgence of cases of Theileriosis (January disease) in some parts of the country, which are directly counteracting efforts to re-build the national herd.
Incidentally, another clear and present danger is stalking the agriculture sector in the form of quelea birds that have extended their aggression to crops like sorghum and millet besides wheat, which is most likely going to dilute the country’s hard toil to boost food and nutrition security.
Acting director for the Department of Migratory Pests and Biosecurity Control Mr Shingirayi Nyamutukwa recently indicated that quelea birds were ravaging sorghum and millet crops that are almost ripe in the Chikombedzi district of Masvingo with Nyamandlovu in Matabeleland North province also facing the same problem.
It is refreshing to note that the department has since swiftly reacted and deployed personnel to contain the invasion.
The team is using the trap netting method to control the pest and has since revealed that it had recorded 80 percent kill rate, which of course, is not effectively taking care of the problem once and for all.
In fact, trap netting seems to be coming in as a stop-gap measure while preparations for the deployment of chemicals are taking place, as the department pushes to replicate what it did to contain last year’s outbreaks.
We also hear that the department is exploring the possibility of using drones in the fight, which may make it more effective in the sense that drones can get accurate information on the breeding sites before applying chemicals directly on the spots from above.
The most known quelea birds’ traditional breeding grounds in Zimbabwe are in Pandamatenga, Matetsi, Hwange, Chikombedzi, Gonarezhou, Checheche, Malilangwe, Beitbridge, Muzarabani and Mana Pools, among other low-lying areas.
The peak post breeding population of the birds is estimated at around 1,8 billion globally, which makes it very difficult to control them in totality.
Traditionally, the birds have been a threat to wheat, but have this time jumped to exploit the opportunity presented by the current crop diversification the country has adopted to boost food security.
In the face of the growing climate change problems, the country has adopted an assortment of measures to climate-proof agriculture with the adoption of drought tolerant traditional grain crops coming in as one of the key strategies.
The threat posed by these birds essentially requires the country to act swiftly and make sure they do not have ready access to the crops lest this season’s highly promising yields are compromised.
For decades, smallholder farmers across the country and even beyond, have been at the mercy of the voracious red-billed quelea birds that move in flocks, which makes it a nightmare for people to contain them individually.
Super colonies of the nomadic birds can grow to millions, making them not only the most abundant bird in the world but also the most destructive.
They may be small in stature, but remain very lethal in terms of the huge damage they can cause.
Naturally, they prefer seeds of wild grasses to those of cultivated crops, but in the absence of wild grasses they turn to fields of sorghum, wheat, barley, millet and rice where they form a constant threat.
The average quelea bird eats around 10 grammes of grain per day — roughly half its body weight, which means a flock of two million can devour as much as 20 tonnes of grain in a single day.
With an estimated adult breeding population of at least 1,5 billion, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) estimates the agricultural losses caused by the quelea to be in excess of US$50 million annually.
The birds’ populations are outrageously robust with millions of them killed every year, but reducing their numbers is highly problematic given that they are highly mobile, have few natural predators and breed extremely fast.
The problem is that a replacement population can swiftly move into an area that has just been cleared of them and because they breed three times per year, with an average of three eggs per clutch — one pair of quelea birds can produce up to nine offspring annually.
They are also long-distance migrants with a range covering well over 10 million square kilometres of Africa’s semi-arid, bush, grassland and savannah regions.
On the one hand, intensive farming and an increase in cereal crop production throughout the continent has resulted in an explosion in their numbers with estimates suggesting that their populations could have increased anywhere from 10 to 100 times since the 1970s.
What makes it difficult to effectively contain them is that the flocks have no respect for national boundaries and can easily move from country to country.
According to the Encyclopaedia of Pest Management, “despite the annual destruction of millions of quelea birds by use of pesticides, damage has continued to increase annually.”
Traditionally, most smallholder farmers control quelea birds through scaring them.
They go into the fields when their grain crop is vulnerable, using anything from catapults to banging and noise-making, which is effective in most cases given that they have no ready access to most modern ways of control such as aircraft for spraying, chemicals, dynamite or flamethrowers.
Their control ways are, however, more environmentally friendly than the modern and sophisticated ways but are largely time-consuming.
Given the difficulties associated with trying to contain the pest, it is important for all stakeholders throughout the country to try and make the brooding sites as inhabitable as possible so that with some chance they may migrate to areas far away from the fields.
One way of doing this is through depriving them of breeding sites so that their populations do not explode suddenly to levels that are not manageable.
It is an undeniable truth that the birds cannot be totally eliminated but the damage can be minimised through close co-operation among stakeholders in different parts of the country and even regionally.
The birds can still invade fields but it is crucial to ensure that they do not attack crops to levels that will present as losses at the end of the season.
We need to do everything possible to minimise the damage so that yields are not compromised.
Quelea birds need to disturbed all the time so that they do not get the time to settle and do their destructive feeding.
In areas like Manicaland, some farmers have resorted to catching them for relish or sale in roasted state.
They are a delicacy to many citizens, which paves the way for the use of the new motto — ‘if you can’t beat them, eat them’ that is used by many farmers. This control method seems to be working out there, albeit at a very slow pace.
Online Reporter