Farmers in several localities in Sudan’s East Darfur State complain about huge swarms of birds and locusts ravaging their farmlands.
Speaking to Radio Tamazuj on Saturday, several local farmers from the war-torn region said that many fear the birds will devastate their crops, which are ready to be harvested. They have tried to combat the birds, but he says there are too many.
Adam Omar, a farmer in Al- Firdous locality, said: “The agricultural season, especially peanut crops, is being threatened by pest birds. Now the birds are too many and there is no government fighting against the pests, so we hope that God will save this agricultural season from pests.”
Meanwhile, Othman Ahmed Hammad, a local farmer, also confirmed that this year’s agricultural season is threatened by several agricultural pests, including birds that threaten the harvest of the millet crop, in addition to locusts spreading among peanut farms.
In the past two weeks, pesticide-spraying exercise was conducted by the authorities in the two localities of Al-Sunta and Al-Firdous in East and South Darfur States.
For his part, the Director of the Abu Fama Project at the East Darfur State Ministry of Agriculture, Al-Rayah Bara Al-Bashari, has acknowledged the emergence of the birds.
He pointed out that the swarms of birds are being controlled using traditional means due to the lack of pesticide-spraying aircraft owing to the ongoing devastating war in the country.
The local official believes that the locusts do not affect the peanut crop because they only destroy the leaves and not the fruits inside the ground, but they affect the fodder.
He called on East Darfur farmers to combat locusts using traditional means.