AGRICULTURAL NEWS - Stella Mwareya cannot hide her frustration as she struggles, in vain, to clear a fast-growing light green shrub that is taking over her farmland.
"There is no way to stop this plant," Mwareya dejectedly told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. "It grows so fast and its seeds are very light and spread far and wide. It will soon take over everything."
Plant experts believe the plant may be Vernonanthura phosphorica, a native of Brazil, and may have been introduced in neighbouring Mozambique in the 1990s, to attract bees and produce honey.
But local people say "cyclone" is causing headaches, regardless, as it spreads across Zimbabwe's eastern highlands, including the Vumba mountains, the Burma valley, and Chipinge.
Thousands of hectares of land are now covered by the fast-spreading plant, which farmers say is nearly impossible to control. Villagers like Mwareya have tried machetes and hoes to clear the weed, while commercial timber plantations have doused it with chemicals and tried to root it out, all without success. "We have lost hope of stopping this plant," Mwareya said.
Worse storms, new pests?
Around the world, changing weather conditions and stronger storms linked to climate change are bringing new challenges for many farmers in the form of new or more virulent crop pests and diseases. Finding ways to control the pests is becoming a priority for protecting food security and incomes in many countries.
Bart Wursten, a leading Zimbabwe plant expert, said it was possible Cyclone Eline has spread the seeds of eastern Zimbabwe's scourge across the mountains from Mozambique. But he said he believed the main reason for its rapid spread in Chimanimani was that formerly well-tended farms had become neglected or abandoned after the country's chaotic land reform programme that began in 2000. "This, of course, happened at the exact same time, in 2000, as the cyclone," he said.
Wursten said the plant was an aggressive invader of disturbed areas and may have gotten a foothold in Mozambique as a result of slash-and-burn agriculture there. But damage from Cyclone Eline also could have opened areas for it to spread, he said.
Apart from colonising farmland in affected areas, the invasive plant is hurting harvests from orchards by starving fruit trees of nutrients, their owners said. "The plant is choking our fruit trees and lowering our fruit harvests," Mwareya said. "What is even worse is that this plant is completely useless to us. We can't use it for stock-feed, we can't even use it for firewood."
Thousands of hectares of land are now covered by the fast-spreading plant, which farmers say is nearly impossible to control. Villagers like Mwareya have tried machetes and hoes to clear the weed, while commercial timber plantations have doused it with chemicals and tried to root it out, all without success. "We have lost hope of stopping this plant," Mwareya said.
Worse storms, new pests?
Around the world, changing weather conditions and stronger storms linked to climate change are bringing new challenges for many farmers in the form of new or more virulent crop pests and diseases. Finding ways to control the pests is becoming a priority for protecting food security and incomes in many countries.
Bart Wursten, a leading Zimbabwe plant expert, said it was possible Cyclone Eline has spread the seeds of eastern Zimbabwe's scourge across the mountains from Mozambique. But he said he believed the main reason for its rapid spread in Chimanimani was that formerly well-tended farms had become neglected or abandoned after the country's chaotic land reform programme that began in 2000. "This, of course, happened at the exact same time, in 2000, as the cyclone," he said.
Wursten said the plant was an aggressive invader of disturbed areas and may have gotten a foothold in Mozambique as a result of slash-and-burn agriculture there. But damage from Cyclone Eline also could have opened areas for it to spread, he said.
Apart from colonising farmland in affected areas, the invasive plant is hurting harvests from orchards by starving fruit trees of nutrients, their owners said. "The plant is choking our fruit trees and lowering our fruit harvests," Mwareya said. "What is even worse is that this plant is completely useless to us. We can't use it for stock-feed, we can't even use it for firewood."
