I KNEW it was a matter of time when the Provincial Government of Negros Occidental would warn farmers against Fall Armyworm (Faw) that attacks rice, corn, soybeans, sugarcane and some other plants and vegetables.
Recently, SunStar Bacolod reported that Governor Eugenio Lacson issued Executive Order No. 19-42, Series of 2019 or the Creation of the Provincial Coordinating Task Force on Faw for the possible entry of exotic pest Faw (Spodoptera frugiperda) within the province.
According to the Rice Knowledge Bank, based on International Rice Research Institute’s pool of knowledge from research findings, adult armyworms survive better and produce more eggs when the temperature is at 15 degrees Celsius maximum, and when plants are naturally fertilized. Periods of drought followed by heavy rains, and the presence of alternate hosts also sustain the development of armyworms.
Pagasa (Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration) warned the country of armyworm infestation brought by El Niño that could affect 47 provinces in the country.
The Department of Agriculture has put in place the preventive safeguards to protect the interest of farmers as well as agricultural crops.
These include the provision of high-quality drought-tolerant varieties of rice, corn and high value crop seeds and intensified pest surveillance and monitoring to avoid the occurrence of pests and diseases.
For livestock, buffer feed stocks, veterinary drugs and biologics are in place while dispersal of fingerlings to replenish projected production loss has been readied for the fisheries sector.
Oxfam-International, the humanitarian non-government organization (NGO), noted that El Niño is a modern day tragedy yet a broadly preventable crisis.
The severity of this El Niño’s impacts is a reflection of the world’s failure to provide comprehensive and long-term strategies to anticipate, prepare and adapt.
Many of its impacts — hunger, loss of livelihoods and displacement — could have been prevented or mitigated by well-planned investments in sustainable agriculture, basic social and physical infrastructure, and essential health and social programs, among others.
El Niño and La Niña are not one-off disasters. Climate change has supercharged El Niño and will bring more extreme weather events.
By this time, bitter experiences and farm losses have taught farmers how to cope with this song-and-dance. The coping mechanisms will be a template of responses to droughts, floods and pestilence from previous disasters. The only question remains the degree—not the nature of actions.