Lwengo farmer uses sugar and animal bones to fight black twig borer

Lubega sprinkles sugar on a coffee plant to attract insects that eat the twig borer. Photo by Issa Aliga.

What you need to know:

As the black twig borer spreads through coffee plantations, and farmers lose their yields, efforts are being made to craft a cost-effective way to counter the pest.

For the last 12 years, John Lubega, 50, a resident of Nkalwe Village in Kkingo Sub county, Lwengo District, had always expected a large yield from his 10-acre coffee fields until April 2010, when the entire crop was destroyed by the black twig borer.

It is difficult to detect the pest and it can only be seen after the leaves and branches have withered. Lubega says he suffered losses in his fields of clonal coffee. The yields reduced from 90 bags to 40 bags per season. He and other affected farmers were advised to make daily inspections of their coffee fields. They were also urged to immediately cut down and burn all the infested coffee trees.

Efforts
“This strange pest has spread to almost all the fields in the districts of Rakai, Lwengo, Kalungu, Bukomansimbi and Masaka putting coffee yields under threat,’’ says Robert Ssentamu, Southern Regional Coordinator, Uganda Coffee Development Authority (UCDA).

He adds that the prevalence of twig borer is almost 100 per cent in the southern region. Almost all the primary twigs, which carry the berries on a tree, have dried hence affecting the volumes of harvests in the region.

Thereafter, many coffee farmers in Rakai, Lwengo, Kalungu, Bukomansimbi and Masaka districts abandoned growing of coffee and changed to other crops like green pepper, beans, maize, cassava, sweat potatoes and fruits, which are not affected by the twig borer.

UCDA has sensitised coffee farmers about the pest and has taught them how to break off the affected twigs and spray the trees with pesticides like Decis and Actara as well as pruning. However, the spraying method is difficult to carry out as recommended because farmers find the pesticides very expensive to buy.

Lubega says for an ordinary smallholder farmer, the costs prove hard to meet. For instance, a litre of Decis and half a litre of Actara are sold at Shs 80,000 and Shs25,000 respectively.

“Farmers in the affected sub counties like Kkingo, Kisekka, Ndagwe and Kyazanga formed groups to meet the cost of some of the more expensive pesticides and other agro-chemicals but eventually failed as more coffee was destroyed by the pest,” he points out.

Alternative method
After such efforts failed, Lubega has adopted an alternative method of using sugar and animal bones around coffee trees to attract the insects (munyeera) that kill the black twig borer. He started using this method about 12 months ago and he claims that it has worked n fighting against the twig borer.

He says it is cheaper to use sugar and animal bones instead of chemicals.

“I buy a kilo of sugar at Shs3,000 and a kilo of animal bones at Shs500, which I apply on more than 200 coffee trees to attract these insects.”

They climb from the stem where sugar is applied up to the branches and they eat the twig borer, eggs, larvae and pupa hidden in small holes inside the branches,’’ he explains.

On each tree, Lubega applies five grammes of sugar on each tree and he uses two kilogrammes over two acres of coffee. He does this every after one month coupled with thorough monitoring.

Meanwhile, coffee farmers in Lwengo District have formed a group to boost the growing of coffee by using traditional or alternative methods in fighting this pest as they seek technical advice from extension officers.