ASIA / PACIFIC
Page 4 n THE ASIAN REPORTER
April 1, 2019
Asia bracing for destruction
by alien pest: fall armyworms
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HA MUANG, Thailand — Fall armyworms (FAW),
a longtime American pest, are munching their way
around the globe, raising alarm now in Asia after
entrenching themselves in Africa.
Experts say the insect was first found outside the
Americas in 2016, in Africa, where it has infested up to
half of some crops of maize, sorghum, and millet. It’s now
spread through Yemen and South Asia to Thailand and
China.
This new arrival to her territory worries Uraporn
Nournart, a specialist on farm pests at Thailand’s
Agriculture Department.
“We never had this one before. They just were found late
last year and in January in this area. It’s a big problem,”
she said while visiting farms recently in Kanchanaburi
province, northwest of Bangkok.
The worms can cause damage at all stages of a corn crop,
but the worst may be when the larvae, pinky-sized
caterpillars, turn sweet corn cobs to mush. The incursions
of the alien species threaten to upend the balance between
cost and return for farmers in Thailand and elsewhere.
Pesticides are costly, toxic, and don’t always work.
In its native regions, from Argentina to northern
Canada depending on the season, the bug’s natural
enemies — predators, parasites, and pathogens such as
bacteria or viruses — help keep it in check. But the new
habitats may lack some of those defenses, the United
Nations’ Food and Agricultural Organization says. A
conference was held last month in Bangkok to help share
information and strategies on battling the pest.
Keeping it in check is an urgent priority: Even though
Asia is mostly known for rice growing, maize is an
important staple crop and crucial source of feed for poultry
and livestock.
In the cornfields in Kanchanaburi, there were
armyworms in all stages of the crop, from seedlings to
knee-high to “elephant’s eye” high.
Some local farmers were working hard to limit their
losses by pulling the tops off stalks grown for baby corn
and discarding them to limit how much damage the
worms could do. That tactic causes the plant to sprout new
ears that can be harvested later.
Organic farmers don’t use the usual farm chemicals so
they can sell the waste corn stalks as cattle fodder.
Spraying with biomaterials like fungi and thread worms
that may be parasites of the worms can help, but some
fields still lost about a third of the first baby corn harvest.
“We’ve never seen anything like this,” said one farmer,
Sanae.
In another field, Thanwa, a younger farmer, sought
help and had his fields sprayed using drones. For taller
plants, that’s about the only way for the small-scale
farmers to get pesticides up onto the affected parts of the
plant once the worms are established.
Swaddled against the burning sun, Uraporn Nournart
and her team of young scientists scrambled through the
fields, peeking into corn husks and pulling apart damaged
stalks to collect worms and eggs for monitoring. They’re
conducting trials in fields like the one Sanae was working
her way through, a tranquil plot of waist-high corn ringed
by banana trees.
Charuwat Taekul, an entomologist at the Department
of Agriculture who specializes in microscopic parasitic
wasps, was collecting egg clusters to use in his research
into natural enemies of the worms. It’s unclear if such
wasps would be effective in keeping the fall armyworms
under control, but it’s one of various strategies being
considered.
T
INVASIVE INSECTS. Uraporn Nournart, a field expert at Thailand’s
agriculture ministry, shows the fall armyworm in Tha Muang, Thailand.
The pest is munching its way through corn fields around the globe, raising
alarm over damage to crops as it spreads into areas that may lack its nat-
ural enemies. (AP Photos/Elaine Kurtenbach)
“Putting into place adequate management measures
once a country gets invaded by FAW is important,” said
Marjon Fredrix, an expert with the U.N.’s Food and
Agriculture Organization (FAO) based in Bangkok.
“However, the likelihood of further spread is real.”
She notes that the worm’s adult moths can fly more
than 60 miles a night, even farther if they’re carried by the
wind.
The best case scenario, says Fredrix, would be farmers
successfully scouting for and finding the worms early on,
so they can keep them under control. The FAO has
developed an app that teaches the basics of how to find
and deal with fall armyworms.
“This new pest needs to be managed in years to come,
and farmers will need to develop skills to do so in a
sustainable manner,” Fredrix said.
The help came a bit too late for Yodsapon, a farmer in
Tha Muang. He follows Uraporn’s team stoically as it
winds its way through his wrecked field of sweet corn.
At first glance, the 6.5-foot-high stalks look vigorous,
with good-sized ears that are nearly picking size. But a
closer look shows holes in the stalks where the worms
have worked their way inside, munching ear after ear into
yellowish brown mush.
The family has other sources of income, a small
eco-hostel set in their tropical garden. But income from
that is unstable, and the corn crop will be missed,
Yodsapon says.
He’s thinking hard about what to do next: Switch to
another crop? Cassava? Potato?
A good harvest from the field would have netted 2,000 to
3,000 baht ($65 to $100), he says. He expects no income
from this one, and spraying repeatedly to try to vanquish
the worm could triple his costs.
“In that case, I can’t afford it,” he says.
Canada takes in refugee who sheltered Snowden
By Rob Gillies
The Associated Press
T
ORONTO — A Filipino wom-
an who helped shelter former
NSA
contractor
Edward
Snowden when he fled to Hong Kong
has been granted refugee status in
Canada.
Vanessa Rodel and her daughter
Keana arrived in Toronto in March.
“I feel so great and I feel like I’m
free,” she said.
Lawyer Robert Tibbo represented
Rodel as she sought asylum in Hong
Kong in 2013 due to an alleged
kidnap and rape by militants in her
homeland. The attorney asked her to
help Snowden hide out there after he
leaked documents revealing exten-
sive U.S. government surveillance.
Tibbo said Hong Kong rejected
Rodel’s asylum request and since
then officials there have grilled her
over her contacts with Snowden, who
now lives in exile in Russia.
Tibbo and a nonprofit group called
For the Refugees wants Canada to ac-
cept five others who helped Snowden.
Snowden’s lawyer decided to go
public with the identities of the
refugees after learning that movie
director Oliver Stone had found out
about them and would incorporate
their role into his film on Snowden,
which was released in 2016. The
three families, who didn’t realize
they were harboring one of the
world’s most wanted figures at the
time, said they feared being sent
back.
“Since that became public they
have been targeted by the Hong Kong
government who called up all of their
refugee claimants and denied them
all on the same day after about a half
hour,” For the Refugees spokesman
Ethan Cox said. “They have had their
support payments cut off. They’ve
only been able to survive off
donations to our nonprofit.”
Snowden tweeted about Rodel and
her daughter.
“Thank you to all those in Canada
Continued on page 5