If you grow tomatoes in Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, or South Africa, you have probably asked yourself this question at some point: is it possible to control tomato pests without spending a fortune on chemicals every season? The honest answer is yes, but with conditions attached. Organic pest control for tomatoes in Nigeria and across Africa … Read more
A farmer in Anambra State planted two hectares of cassava in April. By July the stems looked stunted, the leaves were curling inward, and a white powdery coating had appeared at the joints of nearly every plant in one section of the field. He assumed it was a fungal disease and applied a fungicide. Nothing … Read more
Groundnut farming in Nigeria, Ghana, and South Africa comes with a particular set of worries that most other crops do not share. Because the pods develop underground, out of sight, you often have no idea how bad a pest problem is until harvest day when you pull up the plants and find pods that are … Read more
Most pest problems on African vegetable farms are visible. You see the holes in leaves, the wilting shoots, the insects clustering on stems. You know something is wrong and you can point to the cause. Nematodes give you none of that clarity. A vegetable farmer in Ebonyi State spent three consecutive seasons watching her tomato … Read more
Ghana is the second largest cocoa producer in the world. That fact means very little to a farmer in Ashanti or Brong-Ahafo standing in front of cocoa trees with blackened pods, swollen branches, and a harvest that is going to be half of what it should be. Cocoa farming in Ghana is not just agriculture. … Read more
There is a particular kind of frustration that comes with termite damage on a farm. You plant, you weed, you fertilise, and then one morning you walk your field and find healthy-looking plants that pull straight out of the ground with no resistance at all. The roots are gone. Eaten from below while the plant … Read more
Of all the pests that attack coffee in Kenya, the coffee berry borer is the one that most resembles a thief. It does not announce itself with visible feeding on leaves or stems. It does not cause the kind of dramatic wilting or discolouration that sends farmers running to the agro-dealer. It enters a coffee … Read more
Every yam farmer knows the feeling of stacking a good harvest into the barn after months of hard work, only to return weeks later and find tubers that have gone soft, smell wrong, or are riddled with holes from insects that moved in quietly while no one was watching. Yam storage loss is one of … Read more
You will not see rice stem borer destroy your crop all at once. That is what makes it so dangerous. While fall armyworm announces itself with visible feeding damage across entire fields within days, rice stem borer works quietly from inside the stem. By the time the damage becomes obvious from a distance, the larva … Read more