Abstract
The heart of Marvellous Munyire sank as she looked across her small plot of land and saw the destruction to her maize crop. Every plant had leaves that were shredded, and some plants were dead. She and her family had cut thorn limbs and constructed a two-meter-high fence around the plot to deter damage from elephants, but the thorns were ineffective in stopping the devastation caused by this new pest—the fall armyworm. Maize is a staple food for Marvellous and other smallholder farmers in the Savé Valley of southeastern Zimbabwe, and she now knew that her family would be at risk from food shortage for the coming year because of the crop damage. The fall armyworm, Spodoptera frugiperda (J. E. Smith), is a native insect of North and South America, and in 2016, it was first documented in western Africa in Nigeria. It quickly spread from there like a nightmarish...
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