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Add to Preferred SourcesFAO launched a three-year Global Action for Fall Armyworm Control to scale up efforts to curb the growing spread of the invasive pest which is causing serious damage to food production and affecting millions of farmers across the world.
Fall Armyworm (FAW), a crop pest native to the Americas, has rapidly spread through Africa, and to the Near East and Asia in the past four years.
“It {Fall Armyworm} threatens food security of hundreds of millions of people and the livelihoods of smallholder farmers,” said FAO Director-General Qu Dongyu. He made the remarks at the launch of the Global Action on the sidelines of the FAO’s Council, the Organization’s executive body.
”This is a global threat that requires a global perspective,” he stressed, urging the FAO member states “to greatly scale up the existing efforts” to prevent the further spread of this harmful pest to new regions.
In his address, Qu said that FAO is seeking to mobilize $500 million over the next three years to control Fall Armyworm. To this end, he proposed the establishment of a Global Action Fund – the first-ever multi-partner trust fund aimed at addressing the Fall Armyworm threats, – and encouraged countries to contribute to this funding mechanism.
The initiative also calls for increased partnerships to complement current FAO mechanisms such as Farmer Field Schools and South-South and Triangular Cooperation as well as to create new cooperation channels, Qu noted. In particular, he added, it will feed into FAO’s new data-driven Hand-in-Hand initiative to target interventions where most needed.
Original source: FAO
Published on 04 December 2019