Prime
Battle between farmers and pests
To avoid pest infestation, farmers are advised to harvest their crop early. Photo/Lominda Afedraru
What you need to know:
- Pests often cause school strikes when students are fed on beans with holes drilled in them and have developed a bad taste as a result.
Farming would be far more paying if there were no pests. Our health would be much better if there were no pests. Agriculturalists define pests as living organisms that damage crops. They do so by biting the plants and the crops to feed.
Often they spread crop diseases and they definitely lower the quality and quantity of crops. They increase the cost of crop production because farmers must buy traps or chemicals (pesticides) to control their spread and multiplication.
A lot of time and energy is lost applying the chemicals and traps. It is a process in which the farmers must exercise a lot of caution since traps and chemicals can also be harmful to the farmers.
Nearly all crops are attacked by a pest or two either when it is in the field before harvest or in the store after harvest. Pests cause financial losses to traders as they continue feeding on traded crops either during transportation or in the period when they are on shelves inside shops and markets.
The consumers of the food crops on which pesticides have been applied are at risk of taking in pesticide residues which are poisonous.
Pests are therefore a public health nuisance and everybody is at risk. We must all be cautious and we must all take precautionary measures such as thoroughly washing the crops before eating them. Pests are responsible for causing cancer to food consumers because they introduce substances like aflatoxins into crops. (Vocational Agriculture by Kizito Gerald and Kimbowa Joachim)
Pests often cause school strikes when students are fed on beans with holes drilled in them and have developed a bad taste as a result.
Maize which has been damaged by pests is useless even when it is turned into flour because of the poor taste. School property may be destroyed and other chaotic acts could happen because of pests finding their way into food stores. Pests include human beings who steal crops, rodents, bacteria, viruses, birds, nematodes, locusts, mites, caterpillars, stem borers, weevils, among others. Pests reduce germination capacity of seeds. When they attack crop flowers they interfere with pollination and new seeds may never be formed let alone reducing crop productivity. They impede proper plant growth and the farmer ends up with strange looking seeds and unpalatable fruits. Pests like rodents defecate in the stored grain and cause contamination.
