Socioeconomic and health impacts of fall armyworm in Ethiopia.

Zewdu Abro,Emily Kimathi,Subramanian Sevgan,Tadele Tefera,Hugo De Groote,Saliou Niassy,Menale Kassie

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0257736

Zewdu Abro, Emily Kimathi + Show 5 more

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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0257736

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Abstract

Since 2016, fall armyworm (FAW) has threatened sub-Saharan 'Africa's fragile food systems and economic performance. Yet, there is limited evidence on this transboundary pest's economic and food security impacts in the region. Additionally, the health and environmental consequences of the insecticides being used to control FAW have not been studied. This paper presents evidence on the impacts of FAW on maize production, food security, and human and environmental health. We use a combination of an agroecology-based community survey and nationally representative data from an agricultural household survey to achieve our objectives. The results indicate that the pest causes an average annual loss of 36% in maize production, reducing 0.67 million tonnes of maize (0.225 million tonnes per year) between 2017 and 2019. The total economic loss is US$ 200 million, or 0.08% of the gross domestic product. The lost production could have met the per capita maize consumption of 4 million people. We also find that insecticides to control FAW have more significant toxic effects on the environment than on humans. This paper highlights governments and development partners need to invest in sustainable FAW control strategies to reduce maize production loss, improve food security, and protect human and environmental health.

Highlights

Maize is a staple food for more than 300 million Africans [1,2]
We cannot entirely rule out recall bias, we developed confidence in farmers’ yield and yield losses estimates for the following reasons: (1). we recorded yield and yield losses data agreed by each member of the focus groups discussion (FGD), often after a hot debate
Farmers and government incur management costs, we focused on production losses (PLi) because we did not have full management cost data

Summary

Introduction

Maize is a staple food for more than 300 million Africans [1,2]. Despite the importance of maize, its production is constrained by several biotic and abiotic factors that contribute to subSaharan ‘Africa’s (SSA) pervasive food insecurity. Stemborers and Striga weed were the main maize pests in SSA, a combination known to cause complete maize production failure [3]. Farm-level estimates in some SSA countries showed that FAW causes maize production losses of between 11% and 67% [6,9,10,11,12,13,14].

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